William Hogarth at Vauxhall Gardens: sex, art, music

London was a dirty, chaotic city in the second half of the 17th century. Vauxhall was then a rural hamlet on the south bank of the Thames, and Vauxhall Gardens was merely a square plot fringed by trees. Nothing special, except that people came out of the city to breathe the fresh air, walk and amuse themselves.

The grand walk in the centre of Vauxhall gardens

The pleasure gardens that grew up, from 1661 on, asked a fairly modest fee for admittance and entertainment. Each evening there were organised entertainments which were clean cut and fun, unlike the horrendous bear baiting and other disgusting entertainments offered in the city. However some entertainment raised well plucked eyebrows - the popularity of Vauxhall, especially its secluded paths and gardens, made it an ideal place of business for the working girls of London.

Clearly Spring Garden, as it was first called, must have been a great place for entertainment. This was where Samuel Pepys made his choice of the Ladies of the Night and where King Charles II courted his mistresses (sequent­ial­ly?). It is not hard for us to imagine enthusiastic crowds, squashing onto the river boats every summer evening, holding the shilling entrance fee in their sticky hands.

My earlier post, on pleasure gardens and the society that frequented them, started in 1729 when the young businessman Jonathan Tyers (1702-67) took over the lease to Vauxhall Gardens. He wanted his pleasure garden to become an elegant, civilised and civilising environment.

Tyers transformed what was essentially a plantation of trees into a space for performance and display, with specially designed pavilions, grottoes, sculptures and illuminated serpentine walks. Masquerades, gymnasts and magicians were impressive. Fireworks displays apparently stopping street-smart Londoners in their tracks.

The octagonal Orchestra was a building designed for the performance of music in the open air that opened in 1735. Around it in colonnades, Tyers built rows of supper-boxes where people could enjoy the music while eating and drinking. With 100,000 visitors each season, the gardens offered musicians their first mass audiences.

With Hogarth's (1697-1764) help, these green, clean pleasure gardens became egalitarian spaces where the middle classes could mix with the intelligentsia and the minor nobility. And the not-so-minor nobility; Frederick, Prince of Wales and his entourage loved going to Vauxhall.

People could enjoy in supper alcoves, decorated with contemporary paintings and sculptures. Why did Hogarth make the art choices? Because Hogarth, who was a friend of Jonathan Tyers, had recently married and moved to lodgings in South Lambeth!  Hogarth wanted to help decorate Vauxhall Gardens, giving other artists invaluable public exposure. Tyers was delighted, and in return he presented Hogarth with a lifetime pass to the gardens.

The relationship seemed to work well. David Coke (History Today, May 2012) was convinced that Tyers became one of the greatest patrons of contemporary British art and music. He argued that Vauxhall Gardens were central to the dissemination of Rococo in the public mind, at least in London. Tyers selected architecture, paintings, sculpture, furniture, tableware, lighting and music such that his gardens actively promoted the British rococo style. The artist who most benefited from Hogarth's campaign was Francis Hayman, who had four rococo paintings commissioned by Tyers for the Prince's Pavilion.

For Londoners from 1730 on, it must have seemed like stepping into an ethereal dream world, with wafting music and 20,000 glittering oil-lamps in the trees. I like the saying: music, wine and moonlight. They should have added “sex”, both paid for and free.

Music room in Vaux Hall Gardens by H Roberts, 1752. Photo credit: History Today

Now comes the interesting part. Hogarth understood that art was became increasingly commercialised, viewed in shop windows and taverns, and sold in printshops. New customs were emerging. So Hogarth’s idea was to paint and engrave modern moral subjects; to treat the canvases as his stage and the models as his story's characters. It must have been successful since today Hogarth is best known for his modern moral subjects, of which he sold engravings on subscription.

I understand why Hogarth would want create series of tragic and funny moralising stories, but did the sexy and glittering society who frequented the pleasure gardens give a fillip to his popular Modern Moral series? If Vauxhall, the very place Hogarth had helped make popular and successful, was one of the sources of his vigorous satirising of the manners and values of the day, it seemed strangely like biting the hand that fed him. Nonetheless the dates of these “moral lectures” were intriguing. Harlot's Progress prints appeared for the first time in 1732. The Rake's Progress prints were delayed somewhat but appeared in 1735. Marriage à la Mode appeared a few years later.

one print from William Hogarth's series called Harlot's Progress

Tyer and Hogarth died almost at the same time (1767 and 1764 respectively), so their careers overlapped perfectly with the greatest decades of Vauxhall’s long existence.

The most useful reference is David Coke’s essay "Vauxhall Gardens" in Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth's England, published by the Victoria and Albert Museum London, 1984. Also see Vauxhall Gardens: A History, written by David Coke and Alan Borg, and published by Paul Mellon Centre in 2011. The Works of William Hogarth: in a series of engravings, by John Trusler 2007, is wonderful.

Family health and the Peckham Experiment: 1926-50

Throughout the history of this blog, I have been interested in a growing medical concern for fresh air, sea-water, sun, beach huts, walking gardens, pavilions, pleasure piers, lidos, healthy food and physical fitness.  The problem was that wealthy families could always afford to pay for holiday time in a spa resort or a vigorous ski holiday in the Alps. But what happened to families with inadequate housing, no paid holidays in the fresh air and little access to lidos and pleasure piers?

Swimming pool and diving platform, designed by architect Owen Williams in 1934.

Pioneer Health Centre was specifically set up by a husband and wife medical team (Dr George Williamson d1953 and Dr Innes Pearse d1978) in Peckham, a working class suburb of South London. Motivated by modern ideas of hygiene and good health, the founders wanted to study how light, air, openness and vigorous exercise could be enjoyed by working families and could influence their health outcomes. They did not want to run an illness service; rather they insisted on promoting conditions for personal, family and social well-being.

From 1926-9, the project was started in a small way in St Mary's Road, to serve families living within walking distance. The initial data were written up by the doctors and funding was sought to build a larger centre. Pioneer Health Centre then re-opened in 1935 in a purpose-built piece of modernist architecture.

I am impressed by how the architect, Owen Williams, used modern techniques so that the architecture could play an active role in the Pioneer Health Centre’s philosophy. For example the walls of glass around the Centre were intended to
a] maximise the natural light and
b] retain a structural transparency, representing informality and a welcoming attitude to the community.

The large swimming pool was covered by a glazed roof; all windows could be fully opened, allowing natural air to circulate inside. A flat roof alongside the pool provided ample space for open-air gym classes, as we can see from the photo. Older children had a covered playground that opened directly onto the lovely gardens.

Drs Williamson and Pearse recruited 950 local families to be part of the health-care experiment. For a shilling a week, the families had access to a range of activities eg physical exercise, swimming, games & workshops. Perhaps locals couldn't afford a shilling a week, but the goal was to make the health centre feel like a club which belonged to the families, not an outside charity.

Members were asked to take part in a formal health check each year, and their health was informally monitored as they participated in activities from week to week. The only traditional health treatment on offer was contraception.

Gym class on flat roof top

The core facilities were accommodated by the architect eg cafeteria, games rooms, pool, nursery and gym. The members were actively encouraged to initiate their own choice of classes and activities, using the facilities offered by the Centre at no extra cost eg dress making, ballroom dancing. Self help was the buzz word.

According to Transition Town Tooting, the doctors also recognised the importance of good nutrition, and had a farm providing the centre with fresh, organic produce.

The Centre closed down during World War Two, but was restored and reopened as soon as the soldiers had been demobilised. Alas the bright and breezy Centre finally closed in 1950. It failed for different reasons: firstly it was concerned exclusively with the study and cultivation of health, not with the treatment of disease; secondly it was based exclusively on a limited suburban locality; thirdly its basis was contributory and not free; and finally it didn’t conform to the newly developed NHS structure. But what an amazing concept it had been between 1926 and 1950.

scalloped-glass bay windows right across the front of the Pioneer Health Centre (Pioneer Health Foundation photo)

The old archives from the Pioneer Health Centre, including the medical data collected during the experimental years, are now in the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.  And a review document, called The Pioneer Health Centre Peckham London, was published in 1949 by the National Trust for the Promotion and Study of Health. For an excellent analysis of the rather radical politics involved in self help and in cooperative health facilities, see Anarchism and the welfare state: the Peckham Health Centre by David Goodway.

Elegant Shopping I: Burlington Arcade

Britain’s oldest shopping arcade, according to English Buildings, is The Royal Opera Arcade, near Pall Mall in central London . It was designed in 1815.

Almost immediately after The Royal Opera Arcade opened for business, The Burlington Arcade became a covered shopping arcade in London that ran from Piccadilly on one side to the Burlington Gardens on the other. From the first moment, the arcade was built "for the sale of jewellery and fancy articles of fashionable demand, for the grat­if­ication of the public". And for Lord Burlington! But not for your Great Unwashed English Public.

Burlington Arcade entrance, 1819

The arcade was built for Lord George Cavendish, younger brother of 5th Duke of Devonshire. He had inherited the adjacent Burlington House, on what had been the side garden of the house, and was trying to prevent Londoners from spoiling his lovely home. His architect was Samuel Ware. Opened in 1819, the Arcade consisted of a single straight top-lit walkway lined with 72 small two storey units. Some of the units have now been combined, reducing the number of shops somewhat. You can best see the interiors in Tired of London, Tired of Life.

By the way, Burlington House was a Palladian home, built at the very end of the 17th century. Since the Burlingtons owned it, the main building has housed the Royal Academy of Arts, while five scholarly organisations occupy the two wings of the courtyard and the southern Piccadilly wing.

Anyhow, the pedestrian arcade has always been an upmarket retail location. It is patrolled by Burlington Arcade beadles in over-the-top uniforms. The original beadles were all former members of Lord George Cavendish's regiment, the 10th Hussars. But were they to keep dirty, squalid Londoners from coming in off the street, spoiling the pleasure of the well-heeled shoppers?

Galerie Vivienne, Paris, 1826

The arcade has well-designed shop fronts on both sides, under a glazed roof. Respectable, staid and quietly moneyed, so there are no discount shops here. Rather the shops specialise in good clothing and accessories, elegant art rooms, jewellers and dealers in antique silver. London blog in Window Shopping at Burlington Arcade stressed the arcade’s opulence. Sleevehead blog concentrated on Winter looks: Between Savile Row and Burlington Arcade – smart men’s wear.

Galleria Vitorio II, Milan, 1865-77

It is said that Burlington Arcade was one of the precursors of the gorgeous mid-C19th glassy shopping galleries that emerged across Europe and to the New World. apartmentsramblas blog said Galerie Vivienne in Paris is special. The floor is covered in mosaic, the staircase is made of wrought iron and the stain-glass windows are original. Beautiful ornaments complete the design of the gallery which opened in 1826 and remained the Parisians’ favourite place to go shopping until the Second Empire. Spice of Life blog compared Galerie Vivienne to a stage set for a romantic opera!

Galleria Umberto I, Naples, 1887-91

Consider in particular Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan 1865-77 or the somewhat later Galleria Umberto I in Naples 1887–91. And it is not too far-fetched to see the antecedents of Melbourne’s Royal Arcade 1870 and Sydney's Queen Victoria Building 1898 in Burlington as well, as we will see in two later posts.

I have barely considered the façade of Burlington Arcade, or indeed of any other of the shopping arcades that followed Burlington. That is because a façade was easily changed. The Burlington Arcade façade was added in the early 20th century, too bulky for the original, more delicate decoration inside.

Burlington, Picadilly entrance, 20th century elaboration

For the later and more colourful Royal Arcade 1879 in Old Bond St Mayfair, visit TiredofLondonTiredofLife blog.

For a photo of Burlington Arcade beautifully dressed for Christnas 2009, see WIDN. But do it quickly. The American and European owners of Burlington Arcade apparently want to transform the Regency space into a more brightly lit, stainless steal affair, populated with brand names. The Georgian Group is sustaining objections to what they call brash development. As of December 2011, Westminster City Council was still turning down plans to alter Burlington Arcade in Piccadilly.

Sir Nicholas Winton: ordinary man, extraordinary story

My husband was born in 1947 in Czechoslovakia. My father-in-law lost every single member of the family during the war; my mother-in-law’s family survived marginally better. Clearly I have a vested interest in this story.

Czech children leaving Prague, 1939

In 1938 Nicholas Winton (1909-), then a young office worker in Britain, was asked by a friend to travel to Prague where he would find an exciting and worthwhile project to get involved in. The BBC said his friend was Martin Blake, a master at Westminster School and an ambassador for the British Committee for Czech Refugees, which was helping adults escape. War was imminent. Only two months earlier, Hitler's troops had occupied the disputed territory of Sudetenland, on Czechoslovakia's border with Germany.

Nicholas Winton, 1940

In other countries, refugee organisations had begun organising the Kindertransports, long trains that could carry thousands of Jewish children out of central Europe. It was not clear why Czech­os­lovakian children weren’t being rescued, but once Winton visited refugee camps outside Prague, he quickly realised that there was a mission with his name on it.

People had warned him that the British government would never allow refugee children to flood into Britain, especially since there were no organisations in London and in Prague to deal with virtually orphaned children. People also warned him that Jewish parents in Czechoslovakia were unlikely to send their precious children away. But in both cases, people were wrong.

BBC map of the trip from Prague to London

Winton immediately started raising money to save the children, and on his return to Britain, began finding homes and organising visas for them. This was not an easy task since Londoners, especially children and new mothers, were being evacuated OUT of the city, into the safety of the countryside in 1939.

After recruiting a team to organise the train trips, Winton returned to the UK to obtain permits for the children and to find foster homes for them. Nicholas raised enough money to give each foster family £50, hardly enough to look after the children until the age of 17. But decent families did respond. Winton found homes for all 669 Jewish children.

Nosey Parker and Make A Difference In The World – Be The Change! blogs noted that the only other country that would take these children, apart from Britain, was Sweden. Some of the children were indeed sent to foster homes in Sweden.

Throughout early 1939, Winton trains carried 669 children to safety. Parents stood at the railway station in Prague, bravely waving goodbye to their babies, presumably for the last time. Only one planned trip failed. The last train, with 250 children on board, was due to leave on 1st of September 1939, the day war broke out. At the last minute German troops intervened; the children were taken off the train and never seen again. They, and most of the families left behind, were eventually exterminated.

Sir Nicholas Winton’s heroic acts were unknown, until his wife Grete found an old scrapbook in an attic, detailing his mission forty years after WW2 ended. I find it incredible that he had never told his beloved wife the story!

Lancaster Unity blog showed how Survivors gathered to pay tribute to 'British Schindler' (although the comparison between Schindler and Winton seems to be unfair to Winton). The Czech Railways ran a train so that the Winton children could retrace their 1938 journey. 100 people travelled between Prague and London; among them 20 of Winton's Children, now with children and grandchildren of their own. These now-elderly Winton Children were determined that their own grandchildren should under­stand how much they owe to an otherwise ordinary man. What is even more amazing is that Winton, now 100, stood at the platform at Liverpool St station to welcome them.. again.

Christina’s This and That found a powerful film detailing the story of Winton's Children called “All My Loved Ones” by David Silberstein. And schoolchildren in the Czech Republic will see Matej Minac's film called "Nicholas Winton - The Power of Good."

Statue on platform of Prague's Central Railway station

In retirement, Winton continued to live in Maidenhead and to raise money for worthy causes; the Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is 42 ks to the west of central London. In 1983 he won an MBE for his work with the Abbeyfield Housing Association, whose retirement village in Windsor was appropriately named Winton House.

There is even an art connection or two. Since 2003, there has been a bronze statue outside Liverpool St station, perfectly depicting the children who were rescued. A thousand ks away, the new Statue of Sir Nicholas Winton in Prague shows a bronze statue holding two of the children he helped escape. The two sculpture pieces rightly stand in the two railways stations where the epic rescue project started and ended. And in 2010, a bronze life sized statue was placed on the platform at Maidenhead railway station. The sculpture showed Sir Nicholas reading a book that contained images of the Jewish children he saved. And it showed the trains he used to transport them from Czechosl­ovakia to Britain in 1939.

Statue outside Liverpool St Railway Station, London

History Today magazine (March 2004) has a wonderful review of the rescue programme called Kindertransport: terror, trauma and triumph. Written by Caroline Sharples, the article mentioned Sir Nicholas Winton but focused largely on what happened to the children once they found foster families in the UK.

Bedford Park 1875-80: the first garden suburb?

The garden city movement was a British approach to urban planning that was founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard. Howard’s book Garden Cities of Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform came out in 1898, just one year before he founded the Garden City Association in 1899.

The intention was to combine the advantage of town life with the attractions of living in a healthy rural environment. Garden cities were to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by green belts. They were to include carefully balanced areas of residences, industry and agriculture. Standards had to be maintained beyond the design and building phases; it was important that both the town and the agricultural belt would to be permanently controlled by the public authority under which the town was developed.

Semi detached Queen Anne houses in Bedford Park

In my earlier post, I had discussed Letchworth Garden City 1899, Hampstead Garden Suburb 1907 and Welwyn Garden City 1919, all of them in or near Greater London. All of which begs the question, where did Ebenezer Howard and his association's ideas come from?

Bedford Park Garden Suburb was one of the world's first garden suburbs. As far as I can see, the merchant Jonathan Carr was politically progressive but he was not interested in free housing for impoverished families and he did not believe in communal living. Since we know, for example, that Carr formally created the Bedford Park Company, we can assume that Carr was interested in raising money for his speculative ventures. As it happened, the Company later collapsed, but that only meant that the remainder of the Bedford Park land was sold off to other developers.

Shops and tavern in Bedford Park

Jonathan Carr bought 24 acres of land, just beyond the western fringes of London, in 1875. In his discussions with potential architects, Carr prioritised his needs: attractive houses for middle-class families; clean and healthy village living; and an easy commute into London.

The first architect for the estate was Edward William Godwin a leading member of the Aesthetic Movement. Developer and architect did not get on well together, and as Bedford was not built in the cooperative manner like some later developments, Carr simply asked Godwin to pack up his plans and pencils, and leave. In 1877 Carr hired the architect Richard Norman Shaw instead.

Individually designed detached and semi-detached houses, arranged as terraces, were used at Bedford Park. Shaw adapted C18th styles in red brick and white joinery that he called Queen Anne. So his scheme was important because Bedford was one of the first garden suburbs, but it was also unusual in architectural terms. The nature strip, with its mature street trees, as well as the private garden separated from the neighbours by low fences, appeared everywhere. It won’t surprise anyone that Shaw’s work became very influential.

St Michael and All Angels Church, Bedford Park, 1880

The modern historian Richard Cavendish thought the strong sense of community grew out of the estate’s dendritic layout, with the streets spreading out like tree roots from Turnham Green station. I suspect the newly arrived residents also loved the idea of having a pub, church, club, parish hall and shops at the centre of their village.

St Michael and All Angels Church 1880 was not just any old church, of course; it was designed by Shaw as the centrepiece of Bedford Park. I wonder how the rest of the community sympathised with Shaw’s Anglo-Catholic preferences. Perhaps they were mollified by the presence of the great pub, mentioned above, opposite the church.

The concept of a special estate owed much to the Aesthetic Movement of the 1870s, a movement that romanticised the simple and honest rural life, and celebrated freely expressed beauty. Bedford in turn attracted the families of artists, architects and other aesthetic types, and provided dedicated studios in many of the houses. Perhaps only fashionable, very literate people could afford to live there eg writer WB Yeats, painter Camille Pissarro and Granville Fell, editor of Connoisseur (my second favourite learned journal).

T. Affleck Greeve's book, Bedford Park: The First Garden Suburb

So a full 25 years before the Garden Cities Association was formed in 1899, Bedford Park had showed that many of Sir Ebenezer Howard’s goals were achievable. Bedford Park also showed that arts and crafts developments thrived in the garden suburbs in and near London, as Hampstead Garden Suburb later did.

In 1967 the government formally listed and protected the greater part of the estate, a total of 356 houses. Many of them have since been renovated.

You might like to read Bedford Park: The First Garden Suburb, written by T. Affleck Greeves and published in London by Anne Bingley in 1999. The book includes a selection of old photos taken soon after the suburb was built in 1875. Other illustrations include maps, drawings and architectural plans.

The very ugly side of British Fascism, 1936

I first heard about the 1936 Battle of Cable Street in the early-middle 1950s, a story told with great pride by my grandparents. Then this year, at a conference, I heard the story discussed again.

Sir Oswald Mosley arriving at a Fascist rally, London, 1936

The Battle of Cable Street took place on 4th Oct 1936 in London's East End. On that day, Britain’s Fascist movement was enjoying the triumphs of its brethren in Italy, Germany and Spain, convinced of its righteousness and invincibility, claiming to voice the frustrations of the abandoned and disenfranchised.

Presumably the Fascists believed they were popular, locally. They carefully targeted areas where there were large numbers of immigrants and where the left wing parties were trying to gain support. The Fascists were harnessing their energy to a renewed national purpose i.e promising a “Greater Britain” by getting rid of Jewish and socialist citizens and by giving their jobs to the deserving unemployed.

The East End of London had been specifically targeted by the Fascists. In 1936 the Jewish population of Britain was 350,000 (0.7% of the total population). However nearly half of the nation’s Jewish population lived in the East End – 60,000 in Stepney alone.

Police clearing demonstraters from Cable St, Oct 1936. In History Today

All through the summer of 1936 the British Union of Fascists (BUF) had organised street-corner meetings, fire-bombing and smashing the windows of Jewish shops, daubing racist abuse and launching physical attacks.

Later that year, Sir Oswald Mosley planned to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of his Fascist party; he wanted to send 3,000 uniformed black-shirts in four marching columns through London’s East End streets where the terrified Jewish community was living. The Jewish People’s Council quickly organised a petition calling for the Fascists’ march to be banned, but the government refused to cooperate.

It turned into a clash between the police protecting the Fascists on one side, and local Jewish and socialist groups on the other.  As the photo shows, the anti-fascist groups erected road blocks in Cable Street in an attempt to prevent the march from taking place. The police tried to clear the barricades. As a result, there was a series of running battles between the police and local residents.

Why did the police look after the Fascists and not the local residents of Cable St? Why did the government not protect local residents' homes and families? I am assuming the government felt hamstrung; after all Sir Oswald Mosley was a member of the aristocracy, as was his first wife and his second wife. But even more importantly, the list of titled donors and supporters closely connected to the British Union of Fascists read like Debrett's Peerage.

c300,000 demonstrators from the local East End population turned up. They included many from the equally struggling Irish citizens, the very people Mosley had tried to turn against the Jews. The residents' slogan was the same as the Spanish Civil War slogan - "they shall not pass".

Police baton charging local residents to allow the Fascists through, 1936, The Socialist Newspaper.

A human wall blocked every entrance to the East End, especially at Gardiner’s Corner Aldgate, and a series of barricades were built in Cable Street. Seven thousand police, including the whole of London’s mounted police regiment, could not clear a pathway through for the Fascists. Much to the surprise of the Fascists, the police and the government, Police Commissioner Sir Phillip Game called the march off two hours into the rally; Mosley conceded defeat and disbanded his troops. 80 anti-Fascists and 75 policemen lay injured in the streets, but at least the march had been stopped.

Even today, there is debate about exactly how successful the anti-Fascist Cable Street action was, in the long run? The left wing newspaper The Daily Worker reported on the next day: ‘The rout of the Mosley gang is due to the splendid way in which the whole of East London's working-class rallied as one to bar the way to the Black Shirts. Jew and Gentile, docker and garment worker, railwayman and cabinet-maker, turned out in their thousands to show that they have no use for Fascism.’ This quotation probably did illustrate a general feeling among those who vigorously opposed Fascism, but what of the others?

One great result was that a housing estate was established where unity between the Irish and Jewish communities could be reinforced. Even more significantly, the Home Office was forced to act, to ensure greater public order. As a result of the Cable Street events, the Public Order Act 1936 was quickly passed. This made the wearing of political uniforms in public and private armies illegal, using threatening and abusive words a criminal offence, and gave the Home Secretary power to ban marches. And local authorities in other cities started to forbid the use of town halls by the BUF.

In any case, it must have been difficult to estimate how unsuccessful (or otherwise) the BUF was in other parts of Britain, especially Scotland.

Perhaps we can conclude that Mosley’s movement had their pride dented at Cable Street, but it was hardly a huge body blow to Fascism. Subsequent BUF rallies attracted larger and larger crowds, the party's membership increased and BUF candidates stood in London local government elections in 1937. Along with most active Fascists in Britain, Mosley was not interned until May 1940!! Saving the lives, homes and businesses of the East Enders had not stopped the Fascists. It took until the second year of a catastrophic world war before the British Government saw a clear threat to national security in Mosley and the BUF.

Tower Hamlets mural commemorating the Battle of Cable St, painted 1980s 

In the 1980s, a large mural depicting the Battle was painted on the side wall of the old St. George's Town Hall building in Cable Street. Designed by a local artist, Dave Binnington was forced to abandon the project after it was repeatedly defaced by modern-day Fascists. Varnish protects the mural today from those who would destroy its powerful images. And just off Cable Street, at the junction with Dock Street, a red plaque commemorates the success of the anti-fascists on that October day.

Helpful reading:
David Rosenberg Battle for the East End: Jewish Responses to Fascism in the 1930s, Five Leaves Publications, 2011.

Daniel Tilles, Fascism and the Jews: Italy and Britain, Vallentine Mitchell, 2011.

modernism at The Festival of Britain 1951-2011

I was too young in 1951 to worry about anything more pressing than jacks and hoola hoops, so I an grateful for the history re-presented in Susan Gilchrist: Festival of Britain 60th Anniversary Exhibition.

The Festival of Britain was a celebration that was held on the South Bank of the River Thames in London from May to Sept 1951. The date was special since the Festival celebrated the centenary of the first ever World Exhibition, held in magnificent Crystal Palace back in 1851.

Transport Pavilion, Festival of Britain

Just a few years after WW2 ended, Britain still laboured under a huge war debt and war-time rationing was still in force. This festival was a concerted attempt to lift the spirits of the nation; it was to be "a tonic for the nation".

But more than that. Much of London was still in ruins from the bombs and redevelopment was badly needed. So the Festival was particularly focused on promoting better-quality design in the post-war rebuilding of British cities.

Construction of the South Bank site opened up a new public space, including a riverside walk, which had been previously been filled with warehouses and pretty tatty housing. I don’t suppose all families were delighted to see their housing go, tatty or otherwise. And opposition to the project came from people who believed that the £8 million should have been spent on housing.

The official opening was in May 1951. The principal exhibition site was on the south bank of the Thames near Waterloo Station. Other exhibitions were held in Poplar East London (Architecture), Battersea Park (Festival Gardens), South Kensington (Science) and Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall (Industrial Power) as well as travelling exhibitions. Outside London, major festival activities took place in widely spread cities like Cardiff, Bournemouth, York and Inverness. The Festival ship HMS Campania took a travelling version of the South Bank exhibition to several ports, including Dundee, Newcastle, Plymouth, Bristol, Belfast and Glasgow. Red double decker buses, filled with festival exhibition spaces, toured Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.

So how utopian was The Festival? The layout of the South Bank site was intended by the organisers to showcase the principles of urban design that might predict the post-war rebuilding of London and the creation of the new towns. These included multiple levels of buildings, elevated walkways and avoidance of a street grid. Most of the South Bank buildings were International Modernist in style, rather unusual in pre-1939 Britain.

Dome of Discovery, Festival of Britain

The Dome of Discovery was then the largest dome in the world. It was constructed from concrete and aluminium in a modernist style and housed many of the festival attractions i.e exhibitions on the theme of discovery — the Living World, Polar, the Sea, the Earth, the Physical World, the Land, Sky and Outer Space.

Skylon, Festival of Britain

The Skylon was an unusual steel tower supported by cables that became the centrepiece and lasting symbol of the Festival of Britain; it stood on London's South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The 90 ms high Skylon was built of a steel lattice work frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between 3 steel beams. Even better, the aluminium louvres over the frames were lit up from within at night.

Royal Festival Hall had initially been launched by the Prime Minister Clement Attlee in 1949, on the site of the C19th Lion Brewery building. Built for the London County Council by architect Leslie Martin, Royal Festival Hall visitors were awestruck by the separation of the curved auditorium space from the surrounding building. The building was officially opened in May 1951. The inaugural concerts were conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Adrian Boult.

The arts were important, especially sculptures from Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Jacob Epstein. And their pieces were spread around, placed on prominent areas around the Southbank. An exhibition of sculptures was specifically organised by the Arts Council in Battersea Park. And there were two exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery as part of the Festival Programme: a display on the History of East London and a separate display of craft and popular art forms.

Note the colossal stone relief by ex-pat Austrian sculptor Siegfried Charoux. This work, The Islanders, was to be read as a symbol of the struggle and resilience of the British people. A temporary work, it was mounted on the side of the Sea and Ships Pavilion and later probably destroyed.

How popular was the Festival? 18 million people visited the 2,000 local events that together made up the Festival of Britain. 55 principal events took place all over the UK, mainly exhibitions and arts festivals. In the five months from May to September, people paid millions of pounds to see the events, making very nice profits for the nation. Profits from the Festival were retained by the London County Council and were used to convert the Royal Festival Hall into a concert hall and to establish The South Bank.

As with many world fairs from 1851 on, The Festival of Britain facilities might well have been pulled down. But when Winston Churchill became prime minister once again in October 1951, he expressed his loathing for the Festival in general and the modernist, so-called socialist architecture in particular. He made it the first act of his newly-elected government in Oct 1951 to clear the South Bank site. Skylon was toppled into the Thames and cut into pieces, on Churchill’s specific orders. The Dome of Discover, which had became such an iconic structure for the public, was demolished and its materials sold as scrap.

So apart from the Royal Festival Hall, the built architecture of the South Bank was destroyed immediately after the events. The cleared site is now the location of the Jubilee Gardens, near the London Eye. Luckily in 1988 Festival Hall was designated a Grade I listed building, the first post-war building to become so protected.

The Festival of Britain created a new audience for architectural modernism. The architects did indeed show, by their design and layout of the South Bank Festival, how modern town planning ideas could be implemented. So it was appropriate that a number of modernist buildings on the main South Bank site became iconic symbols of The Festival. One historian noted that the Festival Style of local modernism did have an impact architecture and interior design in the 1950s, especially in the office blocks and cafes of the New Towns.

Right now (April-Sept 2011) the Southbank Centre London is celebrating the 60th anniversary of The 1951 Festival of Britain. The Royal Festival Hall houses the Museum of 1951, a temporary exhibit featuring memorabilia, artworks, personal histories, models, memories and photographs. Taking pride of place at the festival is John Piper’s mural The Englishman’s Home, a 50’ long celebration of English architecture and one of the only surviving artworks from the 1951 nation-wide festivities.

original designs by Robin and Lucienne Day, displayed in Chichester in 2011
 
One decorative arts exhibition was held in Pallant House Gallery, Chichester during the first half of 2011. Robin and Lucienne Day: Design and the Modern Interior, consisted of three rooms of Lucienne’s textiles and Robin’s furniture, arranged chronologically and starting with the 1951 Festival of Britain which launched their careers. Believing in the transformative power of modern design to make the world a better place, Robin had designed furniture for the Royal Festival Hall, and had displayed his steel and plywood furniture in the Homes and Gardens Pavilion, along with Lucienne’s textiles.

Being a post-WW2 baby myself, the 1950s was my least favourite design era ever, but I very glad Pallant House Gallery displayed the Days’ important work.

George Frideric Handel - Georgian gentleman

George F Handel (1685-1759) had been a court musician in Hanover and didn’t travel to London until 1710, when he was 25.  Apart from a brief return to Hanover where he regained the position of court musician in 1712, London became his permanent home. Fortunately Handel had no trouble finding homes of British friends and patrons who would allow him to lodge with them.

Handel, 1727, by Balthasar Denner, National Portrait Gallery London

His timing was perfect. The newly established Italian opera company at the Queen's Theatre in Haymarket was searching for a composer, so Handel’s Italian opera career in London quickly got up and running. They had loved him in Hanover and, largely, they loved him in London.

What a flexible chap he was. During his early years in London, Handel started to attract people interested in English church music, people who would have heard his music at St Paul's Cathedral in those early years. And later oratorio, as well.

What was the difference between opera and oratorio? Like an opera, an oratorio included the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters and arias. But opera was musical theatre, complete with characters, costumes and scenery. Oratorio, on the other hand, was just a concert piece.

Handel's Georgian terrace house in Lower Brook St, Mayfair

In 1723 Handel finally moved into his own place: a newly-built Georgian terrace house in 25 Lower Brook St Mayfair, three storeys high as you can see from the image, plus garret rooms for the servants. Despite the fact that Handel never married and had no children, he also took the upper floors of the adjoining house at 23 Brook Street.

The two nicest rooms for were quiet composing, towards the rear, and performing /rehearsing with guests, towards the front. His home was close to the theatres in which he would be working, yet in a neighbourhood filled with people of substance.

During the 1730s he performed in the newly-built Covent Garden theatre, giving both operas and oratorios there. In the 1740s, Handel started to prefer English oratorios; for these, Covent Garden theatre remained his favourite venue.

Because he lived in Lower Brook St for most of his decades in London, the house naturally became the location where his wrote his most beloved pieces. Two of his best known oratorios, Messiah and Samson, came out of the Lower Brook St study in 1741, as well as Zadok the Priest and Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Even in his later years, Handel seemed to have attended the oratorio performances, and even occasionally performed in them. Although he didn’t have many social engagements during his later years, people could still visit him at home. He died in 1759.

I am not sure what happened to the house between 1759 and the Edward­ian era, but I do know that in 1905 the house was bought by an antiq­ues dealer for himself, his children and his grandchildren. The chan­g­es the Edwardian dealer made to the house were naturally incompatib­le with the Handel era.

When, in 2000, the Handel House Museum Trust took over the job of returning the house to how it would have looked in Handel's day, there were some problems. No original architectural interiors remained from the early 18th century, except for the staircase. And because none of Handel's original furniture has been found, a contemporary inventory had to be used as a guide for installing age-appropriate furniture back into the house.

It is wonderful that this very house has recently become Handel House Museum, opened to the public to celebrate Handel’s life and works. Since music was always played in this house during Handel’s residence in the mid 18th century, music is again played there now. The museum offers a programme of weekly concerts, music rehearsals and educational events throughout the year. And since it was after all a home and not a conservatorium, portraits of Handel and his contemporaries are now displayed in finely restored Georgian interiors.  Exhibitions in the House Museum bring this very English world of Handel's to life.

Front room, used for musical performances and rehearsals

Of the 76 years that Handel spent on this earth, 49 of them were in London, living as a proper English gentleman, albeit with a strange German accent. So Britain's love afair with Handel continues today. Founded by musical director Denys Darlow in 1978, the London Handel Festival has been part of a Handel revival, specialising in the performance of his lesser-known works. In 1981 the London Handel Orchestra and London Handel Singers made their debut at the Festival.

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I wasn't going to mention this but in 1968 Jimi Hendrix moved into the top floor flat in 23 Brook Street with his English girlfriend. The flat is now the administrative office of Handel House Museum. To mark the 40th anniversary of Hendrix’s death in 1970, Handel House presented an exhibition called Hendrix in Britain. With images, music and objects, the exhibition followed his impressive  career in London and his lasting impact on rock music universally. And the connection between Handel and Hendrix will continue to be marked... by an English Heritage Blue Plaque on the facade of Hendrix’s (and Handel's) residence.



From "Anna Maria Grosholtz" to the mighty "Madame Tussaud"

Joe and I had been to Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London with our sons (before they were too independent and stroppy to travel with us). But at that stage I had no idea if Madame Tussaud was a real person or not.

Anna Maria Grosholtz (1761–1850) was born in France, but as her father died when she was still a neonate, her mother had to take work wherever it was offered - Switzerland. Mrs Grosholtz worked for one Dr Philippe Curtius, a physician who used wax modelling to illustrate anatomy lessons for young students.

Dr Curtius moved to Paris in 1765, starting work by setting up a wax exhibition. In that year he made a waxwork of Louis XV's last mistress, Madame du Barry, a cast of which is the oldest work currently on display. In 1767 Mrs Grosholtz took her daughter and joined Dr Curtius in Paris. The first exhibition of Curtius' waxworks was shown in 1770 and seemed to be very popular. In 1776, the exhibition moved to the Palais Royal.

Wax model of a young Maria making a wax model, in the Berlin museum 

Dr Curtius taught young Maria Grosholtz the art of wax modelling and found that she was a very interested pupil. In 1778, she created her first wax figures, mostly famous people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Apparently she lived at Versailles from 1780 to the Revolution a decade later, which might explain how she knew royals so well.

But knowing the royals was not a good thing, once The Revolution started. It could have been a very dangerous time for Maria, but fortunately she was called back to Paris and met many of the people who played a significant role in French life then, including Napoleon Bonaparte.

Maria Grosholtz was arrested during the Reign of Terror (1793-4) and was at great risk of execution by guillotine. But due to the intervention of a member of the Committee of Public Safety, Maria, Dr Curtius and his family were saved  and released. When the mob stormed the Bastille, Maria had to make wax death masks of the victims of the guillotine, particularly King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, Marat and Robespierre. These death masks were hugely popular and guaranteed her a steady career.

On his deathbed in 1794, Dr Curtius left his collection of waxworks to his protégé. In 1795, she married François Tussaud, an engineer from Mâcon, and became Madame Tussaud.

Chamber of Horrors, in the London Museum

Life improved in the new century (1802) when Madame Tussaud and the children travelled to London, but I have no idea what happened to the husband. Due to the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, she was unable to return to France, so she exhibited her collection across the major cities of Great Britain and Ireland for 33 years. 

I wonder if Madame Tussaud herself was aware of the newsworthiness of her travelling exhibitions. At a time when news was communicated largely by word of mouth, Madame Tussauds’ exhibition was a kind of travelling news service, providing insight into global events and bringing the ordinary public face-to-face with the movers and shakers of the era.

Thus it took decades before she could open her first permanent exhibition in Baker St in London, a salon richly decorated with mirrors in the old French taste. However as anyone who has visited will know, the main attraction of her museum was rather macabre: the Chamber of Horrors. This part of the exhibition included victims of the French Revolution that she made with her own hands, plus more recently created figures of murderers and other low lifes.

After living through the most hideous and dangerous era in French history, Madame Tussaud would have initially considered herself lucky to survive to 35 years of age! She must have truly been blessed, since she actually died in comfortable old age, at 88. Long after her death, the museum moved from the Baker St Bazaar to its present site in Marylebone Road (in 1884).

59 Brick Lane Spitalfields: Christian, Jewish, Muslim

By the mid-late C17th, the long street in the East End of London called Brick Lane was being built up from the south. The Huguenots were fleeing religious persecution by the Catholic Church and Catholic government in France. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, tens of thousands of Huguenots sought sanctuary in Britain and brought with them their weaving and silver-making skills.

Traders and weavers lived next to, but not necessarily in Spitalfields. Their late 17th and C18th domestic buildings were well appointed terraced houses, perfect for housing the French weaver families once they became successful; fine city mansions were built around the newly created Spital Square.

substantial  houses, built since 1700

59 Brick Lane, on the corner of Fournier Street, was a plain but quite elegant, rectangular dark brick building with tall arched windows. Even in a heavily built up street like Brick Lane, natural light could flood into the spaces inside.  The building was described as having 2 storeys with a plain band between floors, 6 windows with red brick gauged arches and stone keys, recessed windows, a Palladian window in centre with semi-circular headed windows at sides (1st floor) and 4 segmental headed windows (2 blank in centre) on ground floor.

How was this building used over the centuries?
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today 59 Brick Lane is an elegant mosque

The first community to use 59 Brick Lane were the recently arrived Frenchmen. The Huguenot community built La Neuve Eglise as a Protestant Church in 1743, along with a small school. As these Calvinists worked hard and prospered, some of them could afford to build large and handsome Georgian houses around Brick Lane, with glass-ceilinged workshops in the attics, where they set up their weaving looms. They didn’t forget their religious values either. In 1700, there were nine French churches in Spitalfields, although by the end of two generations of English born Huguenots, the French-speaking community was clearly being assimilated through inter-marriage.

Interior of 59 Brick Lane, when used as a Methodist chapel  (above)

Interior of 59 Brick Lane, when used as a Jewish synagogue (below)

The next group to use 59 Brick Lane were a different people. The London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews used The Jews’ Chapel, as they called the building in 1809, to encourage the physical restoration of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and to encourage the Hebrew Christian Messianic movement. The Society only lasted for one decade in Brick Lane.

John Wesley himself had lived not far away on City Road and preached his first covenant sermon at a chapel, just off Brick Lane. The simplicity and plainness of The Methodist Chapel, as the Wesleyans called it in 1819, would no doubt have suited them well.

When the local silk-weaving trades went into decline, the abandoned properties in this suburb were sublet and in the C19th the East End became a cheap place to live. Waves of impoverished and rather desperate immigrants arrived over the decades, slowly prospered and then moved out of Spitalfields as soon as they could. So as Icons Of England has shown, the building changed a number of times as each community established its own place of worship here.

With the huge influx of Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe flooding into the East End in the 1880s and 1890s, our Methodist Chapel was converted into The Spitalfields Great Synagogue in 1897. Brick Lane was the heart of London’s Jewish community and this was the principal synagogue of the area. Plus there were schoolrooms under the roof for children of the masses of impoverished, hard working refugees. From the 1960s, the Jewish community in the East End dwindled, many moving into more salubrious north London. The building eventually closed.

Since 1976 this building, Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, has been one of the largest mosques in London; 4,000 worshippers can fit into the prayer hall. The mosque has particularly served the religious needs of the large Bengali community which arrived after World War Two. The non-structural fittings like pews were removed, the opening in the centre of the gallery was reduced in size, made octagonal and moved eastwards, while retaining the columns on the ground floor supporting the gallery. A partition wall was inserted around the western end of the ground floor, and a qibla was constructed on the ground floor under the SE corner or the gallery. The northern and central vaults were also converted to prayer halls. Rooms adjacent to the prayer halls were adapted for washing.

Once again there is an school for religious instruction here, on the first floor, but this time it is an Islamic school. The former Huguenot chapel and former Great Synagogue in Fournier St and the adjacent former school buildings, now used as ancillary spaces for the mosque, are Grade II listed buildings.

Princelet St Synagogue, behind this Huguenot house

Another of the handsome Georgian houses in Spitalfields that were built by the Huguenots eventually became the Princelet St Synagogue. The front of the building is a former Huguenot house built in 1722, but at the rear was a synagogue, built in 1862. Like the other 38 synagogues in the City and the East End, Princelet St Synagogue lost its Jewish population in the two decades after WW2 ended.

Sandy's Row Synagogue, men on the ground floor, women section in the balcony

Sandy's Row Synagogue is fascinating for two reasons.  Firstly the synagogue was established in 1870 by a society of Dutch Jews, not Russians, Ukranians and Lithuanians. Secondly the synagogue, formerly a French Chapel, is the only extant, functioning synagogue in the East End today.

Two projects based on Spitalfields have recently come to my attention. Firstly a BBC programme called Saving Britain's Past was shown in Dec 2009. It did not ask whether the old Huguenot chapel cum synagogue should now be a mosque - that is beyond dispute. Rather it asked how today’s Bengali families could make the area their own, while not destroying the heritage value of old Spitalfields.

Georgian home in 27 Fournier St, restored by the Spitalfields Trust

Secondly The Spitalfields Trust bought crumbling Regency (1809-15) houses in Whitechapel, selling them on to Londoners who then let the Trust rebuild them observing strict conservation rules. For six years, Homes & Property has followed the story of the horseshoe of homes in a run-down part of East London. In this year’s Georgian Awards, presented by the Duke of Gloucester, the restoration work was highly commended. Plus The Spitalfields Trust project won first prize in Country Life’s national restoration competition.

One renovation stands out in particular. Fournier Street was the last street to be laid out on the Wood-Michell Estate and was originally known as Church St. 27 Fournier Street was built by Peter Bourdon of Spitalfields, who was granted a 98 year lease in 1725, the date that appears on the rainwater head on the front of the building. The weaver Mr Bourdon was believed to have been a prominent member of Spitalfields society. I assume from his surname that Mr Bourdon was a Huguenot. He would be delighted with how 27 Fournier St looks today.

The Tired of London, Tired of Life blog recommends visiting London's Museum of Immigration at 19 Princelet Street. The museum's home page says that 19 Princelet Street is a magical unrestored Huguenot master silk weaver's home, whose shabby frontage conceals a rare surviving synagogue built over its garden. The staff are working to save the building and to create a permanent exhibition documenting the history of the Huguenots, Irish, Jews, Bengalis, Somalis and others who shaped this Spitalfields.

Modern art destroys British morals, 1910! Read all about it!

Modernist art from the Continent was not seen very often in Britain, at least in the years before World War One broke out. Durand-Ruel DID bring beautiful Impressionist art to exhibit at the Grafton Galleries in 1905; although people greatly admired the works, the paintings weren’t sold. An Exhibition of the Works of Modern French Artists was presented by Robert Dell at the Public Art Gallery of Brighton (in 1909?) but I cannot find its catalogue or list of paintings.

It should be noted that after the turn of the century, Impressionist art was hardly cutting edge any more, at least not in France. So Roger Fry, Bloomsbury art critic extraordinaire, decided he was going to launch modernist art on the unsuspecting public of Great Britain. With his many contacts in the art world, Fry asked leading collectors in Europe to lend him their paintings; they did! Better still, many of the works were for sale. Modern art dealers were more than eager to break into the British market, and willingly gave him paintings on consignment.

Edouard Manet, Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882, now at Courtauld.

Roger Fry asked another Bloomsburyite Desmond MacCarthy to become the secretary of the huge project. I know the Bloomsburies tried to help each other socially and professionally, but did literary critic Desmond MacCarthy have any knowledge of the visual arts?

Desmond accepted Fry’s offer. He and Clive Bell were soon travelling to Europe, visiting Parisian dealers and private collectors, arranging an assortment of paintings to exhibit at the Grafton Galleries. Even if Desmond had been familiar with C19th art, his was a tricky assignment, acquiring the work of modernists little known in Britain. The Art World said that Desmond’s biggest success was in negotiating with Van Gogh's sister-in-law, Madam Gosschalk-Bonger, for the Van Goghs they eventually exhibited.

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, now in MoMA NY

Roger Fry was actually defining Modern Art by his selection process. The modern (post-1890) French masters and their colleagues eg Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Seurat, were clearly not Impressionists. But what were they? While preparing for the exhibition, Desmond MacCarthy noted that they had no shorthand way of describing the art era they were analysing. “Post-Impressionism” was the label quickly created by Roger Fry, the label subsequently adopted by art historians and gallery staff. For Clive Bell the term meant moving past Impressionism and denoted a careful move away from natural representation. Instead Post-Impressionism described a move towards symbolic meaning, bold, unrealistic colours and expressive brushstrokes. Pictorial structure and the symbolic use of colour and line became the themes of the 1910 exhibition.

In Nov 1910, Fry announced that The Manet and the Post-Impressionists Exhibition would open at the Grafton Galleries in Mayfair. He also commissioned a very smart poster, to attract interest. Fry feared that most British art critics in 1910 STILL thought that Monet couldn’t draw and that Renoir didn’t tackle serious subjects. What would they do when they saw the artists Fry, Bell and MacCarthy had brought over the Channel!

So there was certainly some awareness of the risk Fry and his Bloomsbury mates were taking. If I had been in Fry’s position, I might have concentrated more on the Fauvists (1905-7) who created brilliant, luminous colours and bold, spontaneous handling of paint. He did exhibit plenty of Matisses, but Derain, Vlaminck, Rouault and van Dongen may have been a more gentle introduction to modernism than, say, Picasso.

Paul Gauguin, Woman Holding a Fruit 1893, now in The Hermitage.

This exhibition had been pulled together quickly, but if ever there was a flashy art exhibition, this was it - Manet and the Post Impressionists was arguably the most significant and the most controversial show of paintings ever to be held in pre-WW1 Britain. In this landmark exhibition, there were more than 20 paintings by each of the most important artists – Manet of course, but also Gauguin, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Seurat and Picasso. I would love to know specifically which of their paintings were displayed – only Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergiere has been identified for me with certainty.

How did the professional critics respond? The reviews were mainly ugly. The critic for The Pall Mall Gazette described the paintings in the Post Impressionist Exhibition as the output of a lunatic asylum. The Morning Post critic Robert Ross thought that only psychiatrists interested in psychoses would be interested in the thoughts of this particular group of artists; Sir William Blake Richmond wrote in the Morning Post, “Cézanne mistook his vocation; he should have been a butcher”. The art critic of The Daily Telegraph had a hissy fit, throwing down his catalogue at the door of the catalogue and stamping on it. One traditionalist artist went as far as warning young men not to enter the gallery for fear of being horribly corrupted by what lay within.

The popular press almost universally supported this view: the exhibition was dangerous! According to the tabloids, the modernist artists couldn’t draw or paint; the colours were obscene and the works were an offence against British culture.

But ordinary art lovers seemed to love the sense of modernity that was finally coming to British shores. Over 25,000 paying customers crowded into the West End Gallery. Fellow Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were of course very enthusiastic about the exhibition. More interesting for readers of this blog was that the exhibition powerfully affected the work of some of the painters in Walter Sickert's circle, the Camden Town Group. The paintings showed these young British artists that the use of strong, flat colours could be expressive.

Burlington Magazine concluded: “While the exhibition did not make its leading artists household names overnight, it prepared the ground for their eventual canonisation over the following decade. Gauguin, whose work escaped the worst excesses of critical abuse, became a figure of romance and rebellion; Van Gogh was the deranged genius of popular imagination; and Cézanne, from being an incompetent bungler, rapidly assumed shaman-like status in the development of Modernism”.

Paul Cézanne: Still Life with Watermelon and Pomegranates, c1903, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Despite the hostility expressed by traditionalist art circles, or because of it, Fry was soon hailed as a champion of modern art and he became a focal point for the avant-garde. He decided to follow up the first Post-Impressionist exhibition with a second one. Patronised by Bloomsburyite Lady Ottoline Morrell, The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition opened in 1912, also in the Grafton Galleries. This was broader, more consistent and more modernist than the first, and included several Cubist works (perhaps for the first time in Britain). And two extra nations were represented. A local section, chosen by Clive Bell, displayed paintings by Bloomsbury artists like Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. And there was a Russian section organised by Boris Anrep. The 1912 exhibition was fortunate; the sense of outrage in Britain had become muted in the intervening few years since the first Fry blockbuster.

Fry also founded the Grafton Group in 1913, providing local artists with the opportunity to exhibit any work they were creating in the post-impressionist style. Even during WW1, Fry organised major exhibitions that brought modern works of art to London, like The New Movement in Art.

Read: Manet and the Post-Impressionsists. A centenary issue in Burlington Magazine, #1293, Vol 152, Dec 2010.

1910 poster(L)                                 Roger Fry biography (R)