Artquake, 1910: The show that shocked London.

From Ridicule to Respect:
How Post-Impressionism altered national  perceptions of art. 

Modern artists are no strangers to controversy. So many boundaries have been pushed and pulled, so many dimensions explored and taboos broken that we’ve come to expect our art to be provoking. In fact, we expect nothing less; such works command thousands, millions. But it wasn’t always the way. In London, just over a century ago, the biggest storm in the history of English art was about to break, with our most famous and cherished artists of today relegated to the status of a freak show.

Virginia Woolf’s often quoted comment that “on or about December 1910 human character changed”, reminds us of the impact the first Post-Impressionist exhibition had upon public consciousness. England had barely been touched by the artistic revolution raging across the Channel, with middle class tastes set by the traditional teaching of the Royal Academy. At the time it would not have been possible to predict the “artquake” that was about to drag England unexpectedly and belatedly into the modernist era. Significantly, the newly powerful Edwardian Press were to play a key role in the fervent dialogue that sprung up in the show’s wake.  Public responses would range from disbelief to the hysterical and those involved were to find themselves the targets of censure and hostility for challenging the very definition of art and national identity. For better or worse, Post-Impressionism was about to seize the public imagination.

                                                                       Roger Fry, self portrait

The show was the brainchild of Bloomsbury artist and critic Roger Fry, although until shortly before, even he had remained unconvinced by the new art and firmly wedded to tradition. Since 1906, Fry had been Curator of Paintings in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and envisaged an Anglo-American future for the arts, rather than with his European contemporaries.  He was first impressed by Cezanne’s work at an International Society exhibition in 1906, although damned it with faint praise, admitting they were at least “complete” and had “power.” By 1908, he was writing in the Burlington Magazine that Cezanne’s position was assured and that the art of Gauguin, Denis and Signac also offered an “expressive alternative to the Impressionists’.” However, he could still not accept the European use of bright colours, reacting in bafflement to the colours in a work by Moreau, whilst admitting that it “must be possessed of a quite astonishing artistic intelligence…yet for the present, I do not quite see it. I can suppose myself capable of seeing it; I can argue that I ought to; but I still fail.” His own 1909 one man show at the Carfax Gallery presented a typically English palette of browns, blues and greys, gently criticised in the Times for its colours:” “a land of everlasting twilight would be a dreary place” and the Morning Post for inaccessibility: “people will have to be under its influence for a time to appreciate its beauty.”

Something changed though. The following year saw Fry’s focus shift from past to present and a desire to breathe new life into the modern art movement; writing to William Rothenstein in January 1910, he announced “I feel a new hope altogether about art…all those who care and are not fossilized must get together and produce something.” A chance meeting on a railway station platform that month provided the opportunity.

                                                    Vanessa Bell by Roger Fry

At Cambridge Station, awaiting the London train, Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell introduced herself and her husband to Fry, in a move that was to have immense repercussions for the impact of European avant-garde art upon London. Clive Bell had developed an interest in art independent of his wealthy “hunting, shooting, fishing” family who had made their fortune in coal; Cambridge friends had been impressed by a reproduction Degas hanging in his room: in 1904 he had visited Paris ostensibly to research a paper, yet spent all his time at the Louvre. Vanessa, the elder sister of Virginia Woolf, had received some formal training at South Kensington Art School, the Slade and the Royal Academy School but social ties gave her wider connections, including radicals like Walter Sickert and society portraitist John Singer Sargent.

 Towards the end of that year, when Fry was asked to organise an exhibition for the Grafton galleries, he “seized the opportunity to bring before the English public a selection of works conforming to the new direction.” Part of the problem was the wide range covered by these artists; no coherent style united them, it was simply their simultaneity that prompted Fry to choose their name. “Manet and the Post-Impressionists” included two hundred and twenty eight catalogued items, of which twenty-one were Cezannes, twenty-two Van Goghs, forty-six Gauguins, a few Vlamincks, Derains and Frieszs and twenty-two Matisses, covering painting, drawing and sculpture.

Helping Fry organise the event, art critic Desmond MacCarthy had some inkling of the potential public explosion that was to follow and welcomed it, expecting “howls of derision,” as “the cat has been let out of the bag” and “the more it jumps the better.” Critic Frank Rutter had already used the term “Post-Impressionist” about the work of Othon Friesz in that October’s Art News and pressure from the media forced a quick decision regarding the exhibition’s name; in fact the whole show was put together in haste, with preparations lasting until four in the morning of Press day, to which MacCarthy walked as if to “the gallows.”

                                                      Matisse's portrait of his wife

Then they simply had to wait and see what the reactions would be. The first rumblings came from the show’s eminent patrons: Sir Charles Holroyd, director of the National Gallery asked that his name be removed from publicity on seeing the paintings and the Duchess of Rutland wrote to MacCarthy that she was “horrified” at being associated with the exhibition. A slightly less extreme reaction came from Charles Holmes, Slade Professor at Oxford, whose lukewarm guide went on sale at the exhibition, vaguely praising Cezanne and granting “in the arts, I am inclined to think that a stimulus of any kind is healthy.”  Chasing a sensational headline, critic Robert Ross misidentified “a wide-spread plot to destroy the whole fabric of European painting,” another commented that “the exhibition is either an extremely bad joke or a swindle” and at the Slade, Professor Frederick Brown broke off his long standing friendship with Fry and students were warned to stay away for fear of contamination. The anonymous critic of the Connoisseur regretted that “men of talent…should waste their lives in spoiling good acres of canvas when they would have been better employed in stone breaking for the roads.”

But there was no going back now. Londoners were let loose with howls of derision upon works that a century later would be recognised and loved world-wide.  The spectacle of art was treated much like any of the sensational shows to be visited at Olympia or Alexandra Palace as the critics recognised: “the British public will flock to the new sensation and laugh, marvel or rage…” for their amusement. Their behaviour was not unlike that of the stalls at a music hall. One critic used the analogy of dogs and music, “it makes them howl but they can’t keep away.” He had overheard the paintings described as “nightmares” and the “ceaseless hee-haw” of laughter, while the Observer described “the majority of the pictures…are not things to live with.” The Illustrated London News tried to capture the range of public responses: “some who point the finger of scorn, some who are in blank amazement or stifle the loud guffaw; some who are angry; some who sleep.”

                                                 Gauguin's controversial yellow Christ

Whilst some still persisted in seeing these new works as “post-savages…apaches of art” whose work belongs “on the pavement,” according to one letter sent into the New Age magazine, reactions did mellow after the initial weeks. By January 1911, the Daily Graphic was able to report “the general attitude was one of admiration and of regret that an exhibition which has furnished so much food for discussion must close.” V.H.Mottram attended the exhibition “as unbiased as anyone could…owing to the newspapers” and expecting to “be made to laugh,” which he did, “at the stupidity of the comments made in my presence by the other visitors.” Douglas Fox Pitt reminded readers that “all art movements have grown out of difference” and the inability to see the beauty in Cezanne indicated “a defective aesthetic sense.”

The public’s reactions had not been a surprise. Stirred by the comments and cartoons in the National Press, Londoners of all classes had gone along to the Grafton Galleries expecting to be amused and were not disappointed. With artistic tastes dictated by the Royal Academy and favouring the representational and heroic, it is not surprising that the subject matter and brush work of artists like Van Gogh and the colours of Gauguin and Cezanne were not instantly accepted. Works that appeared to be simplistic, immediate and rule-breaking threatened the powerful Edwardian hierarchy that was already crumbling and tapped into middle and upper class fears about the blurring of social boundaries. Teaching in London’s art schools had favoured the “draw for seven years – learn anatomy and chemistry and the use of the stump,” approach derided by Vanessa Bell. Once the masses had seen the Post-Impressionists, the message was spreading that an expensive education and social connections were not necessary in order to paint. What was needed instead was passion and creativity.

                                                                Van Gogh

The furore died down as quickly as it had arisen. Some new scandal came along in the papers and some other taboo of Edwardian society was being threatened. By the time Fry bravely mounted his follow up exhibition in October 1912, the participants and public had a far better idea of what to expect. Still, Londoners of all classes had not changed their views significantly. Cutting his honeymoon with Virginia short, Leonard Woolf hurried home to help as nine out of ten visitors were still roaring with laughter at the Matisses, Picassos and Cezannes. Fifty years later, Woolf particularly recalled that “every now and then some red-faced gentleman, oozing the undercut of the best beef and the most succulent of chops, carrying his top hat and grey suede gloves, would come up to my table and abuse the pictures and me with the greatest rudeness.”

Initial reactions might have been extreme but for Londoners, Fry’s exhibition was the start of an immense change. Today the influence of artists like Picasso and Gauguin, Matisse and Cezanne is impossible to underestimate: their challenge to the artistic conventions has infiltrated all aspects of design and injected colour and freedom into the stagnating Edwardian art world. Our world is one of bright colours, broached boundaries, immediacy and multi-dimensional media. Without them, the achievements of modern leaders in the field such as Richard Wright and Rachel Whiteread, Mark Leckey and Tracey Emin would not have been possible. In 1910, Virginia Woolf was right to describe the experience as provoking a change in “human character”; a century on, with the popularity and accessibility of the capital’s galleries and the incredible range of works on display, Fry’s legacy can be felt daily by Londoners in the Twenty-First Century. If only Fry were able to come and take a walk around the Royal Academy today

Women of 1912: a generation of new consumers

The women of 1912 had been born and raised during the Victorian era, yet soon the watershed conflict of the Great War would forever alter their lives. In less obvious ways though, the world their mothers had inhabited was already changing, taking small but significant cultural steps towards the modern. In terms of their domestic lives, experiences, clothes and daily routines, our counterparts of a century ago were living through a period of exciting transformation.

                                                                           A 1913 corset
 
In 1912, around one in eight women was in domestic service of some sort, from the lowest form of skivvy cleaning out the fireplaces to the impoverished genteel roles of nanny or nurse maid, living in the homes of wealthy families. Eighty percent of people lived in towns, with the increasing development of public transport- in the form of the underground, trains and omnibuses- making transport more possible. For respectable women though, this was still a minefield to be negotiated and many still hesitated before using these unchaperoned. For the more daring, the advent of the bicycle meant considerably more freedom, even if it raised a few eyebrows. Female equality had already been a topic of hot debate whilst many of the women of 1912 were in their infancy; in that year, though, many activists began to use more militant tactics in order to protest about their inability to vote. Society was still polarised between the privileged minority and the mass of working class, yet increasingly a more leisured middle class with some disposable income was emerging, looking to ape the lives of the upper classes. "The Queen" magazine ran a regular column, allowing them to follow the escapades and society events of the "upper 10,000."

                                                 Queen Alexandra, widow of Edward VII

The first Ideal Home exhibition had taken place at Olympia in 1908, aimed specifically at the middle-class housewife with a little money to spare. It featured a range of full-scale homes designed to attract first time buyers. At the time, 90 percent of homes were rented and over the next few years, a huge drive towards home ownership and the expansion of the suburbs and establishment of the airy, healthy and accessible garden cities, aimed to reduce this number. The 1910 exhibition featured a "dream home" of eight rooms, which cost £600 to build. By 1912, it had become a five-bedroom, eleven roomed ideal, costing £1100, which was considered well within modest means. Lifestyle magazines suggested layouts and furnishings peopled by ideal families, in the style of the country "hunting, shooting, fishing" set. In the rapidly expanding suburbs, the mock "Jacobethan" style was most popular: everyone wanted to own their little castle and plot of land, with its flushing toilet, spacious bedrooms and sanitised kitchen. In newly built avenues named "Belle Vista" and "The Beeches," the commuter was king.

Inside these homes, things were changing too. As recently as 1900, electricity and indoor plumbing had been beyond the reach of the majority; by 1914, most London homes had a gas cooker fitted. From 1912, after the BCGA- a compressed Gas company- was founded to reduce labour and reach female customers, door to door salemen and accessible salesrooms displayed the latest cookers, vacuum cleaners and electric irons. The increasing use of tinned and packaged foods also made life easier for the Edwardian woman, no longer needing to spend hours slaving away in the kitchen. Many popular brands were launched, such as Birds and Frys and Cadbury; the first Heinz factory opened in London in 1905. Soon the familiar "catsup" bottle was gracing many tea tables. By 1914, Britain was the largest importer of tinned and dried foods. In her 1909 "Book of the Home," Mrs Humphreys gave the young ambitious hosuewife advice on how to copy expensive styles cheaply and a range of new women's magazines included tips for recipies and household care, as well as patterns to replicate the latest fashions. Shopping increasingly became a leisure activity, with department stores offering a safe haven for unchaperoned women to spend time and perhaps pick up a few bargains. Selfridges, founded in 1909, attracted female customers with its in store library, quiet room and restaurants: the experience was key: such shops provided an equivalent of the male club, where women would conduct social occasions and even receive post. With increased leisure time, women needed somewhere to spend it. Alternatively, shopping could be done from the comfort of one's own home using one of the many thick, detailed catalogues issued by companies such as Heal's or The Army and Navy stores.

Inside the kitchen at the White House, 1910

An explosion of beauty products; lotions, perfumes, creams and soaps; showed the emphasis this era put on the emulation of physical ideals. Many relatively cheap new products brought a touch of luxury within reach, with garden-style scents like violet, sweet pea, lily-of-the-valley and rose, with exotic Art Nouveau labels. Yardley's April Violets can still be purchased in modern chemists. These were the last days of the corset, with the ideal figure being elongated, with low hips and bosom, dictated by the S-shaped underwear of the American Gibson girl. The pigeon-chest and large blowsy hair were instantly recognisable and adopted by many leading ladies, especially the scandalous Evelyn Nesbit, notorious for the 1906 New York murder of her lover by her husband. In the late Victorian era, fashions had been set by the appearances of royal mistresses such as Lily Langtry and Alice Keppel, as well as the denizens of the stage like the hugely popular Marie Lloyd, Ellen Terry and Lily Elsie. Elsie was one of the most photographed women of her era; she launched the career of designer Lucile (Lady Duff Gordon, Titanic survivor,) by appearing in her hats.

An edition of the Suffragette commemorating Emily Davison who threw herself under the King's horse at the Derby, 1913

                                                 Mary Pickford, popular Hollywood actress


Cheap, mass-produced magazines catered to a new found literacy. Since the 1880 education reforms, a new generation had remained in school longer and more profitably; while prices, time and accessibility might put books beyond the reach of many working class and employed women, stands selling aspirational magazines could be found on street corners and at stations. They could choose from titles such as "Home Fashions," "Fashions for all," or "Weldon's Ladies Journal," for 3d; while "Practical Fashions", featuring three patterns for a bodice and blouse cost only 1 1/2d. "Enquire Within" had a wider scope, containing "homely reading," "boudoir gossip," "social confidences," bargains and short stories. Of wider appeal still were the many magazines catering for specific contemporary interests, from "The Lady's Gazette" and "The Wheel of Fortune: the romance of luck is in real life" to "Idle Moments," "The Vegetarian," "The Epicure," "Temperance Advocate" and "Competitions: everybody's weekly." The demand for gossip and romance were liberally met with "Chic," "Tat," "Gossip," "The Cosy Corner" and "Forget me Not." Imported American magazines introduced new icons such as Mary Pickford, who had made her debut in 1909 and by 1912 had earned her epithet "America's Sweetheart" by appearing in over fifty films so far. The first Hollywood film had been produced in 1910 and publications like "Motion Picture Story" and "Photoplay," founded in 1911, made the faces of the first actresses famous world-wide.

                                                             An Edwardian family portrait

                                    The wasp-waist and pigeon-style chest of the Gibson girl style.

Fashions were changing rapidly. Exciting innovations from abroad were beginning to liberate female dress and introduce new body shapes and fabrics. The House of Poiret, established in 1903, offered the restrictive but very popular hobble skirt, which was banned by some employers as being too dangerous for work. In 1911, Poiret founded the Ecole Martine to afford working class girls with some artistic talent the opportunity to be trained. After visiting the Wiener Workstatte, an oriental influence blended in his work, along with the style and colours of the costumes designed for the Ballets Russes by Leon Bakst. Poiret also launched his own perfume line; his 1912 scents included "La Rose de Rosine" and "Fan Fan Le Tulip." Also in Paris, Russian-born Sonia Delaunay's clothing designs were driven by her theories on the simultenaiety of colour, whilst in Vienna, Emilie Floge's salon, established in 1904, prodcued loose clothing in bright blocks of colour, like the paintings of her lover Klimt. The Parisian Vionnet house was established in 1912, with its flattering bias-cut pret-a-porter clothing and Coco Chanel set up shop in 1913. While the Great War would set back the flourishing of many of these houses and the availability of leading fashions, it fuelled home industry, with many women adapting, dyeing and altering existing garments in order to refresh limited wardrobes.

Poiret fashions from 1908

A number of women were leading in their artistic fields in 1912. Garden designer Gertrude Jekyll had an existing reputation based on her articles and photographs before meeting architect Lutyens in 1889. Together, they designed almost 100 gardens between 1900 and 1914; Jekyll had become a household name through the publication of her books and features in popular magazines such as "Country Life." Artist Vanessa Bell, sister of the author-in-embryo Virginia Woolf, was at the vanguard of modern English art. A key figure in the two controversial Post-Impressionist Exhibitions of 1910 and 1912, her work was at its most experimental during this time. Influenced by Cezanne and Matisse in particular, her abstract, fine and applied art showed her to be one of the few female English artists working in the Post-Impressionist tradition before the war. Irish designer Eileen Gray, an ex Slade student, was influenced by Parisian and oriental styles in her creations; wishing to create contemporary items, an exhibition of 1913 gave her the break she needed. Famous for her minimal tables, chairs and carpets, she was commissioned to create three large pieces by Jacques Doucet, which brought her wide acclaim. Among the most famous names in the England of 1912 were popular novelist Elinor Glyn, for her mass market erotic fiction and the hostess and cook Rosa Lewis, trained by Escoffier, owner of the exclusive Cavendish hotel. Such women set the standard of fashion and behaviour, for an aspirational middle class to buy into.

                                                 Vanessa Bell, "Studland Beach," 1912.

                                                               Eileen Gray, 1920s

In 1912, images of travel were everywhere. Postcards, boardgames, magazines, cigarette cards and posters featured images of cars, ships and planes. The world was changing; perhaps one of the greatest and sudden changes of all was brought about by the innovation in transport; the remaining years before the Great War saw a struggle for dominance between the Victorian, Imperial world and the freedoms of the modern age.  For the middle-class Edwardian housewife with a little disposable income, the times offered unprecedented levels of consumer choice. However, the coming years would bring greater privations and trials as well as new opportunities for employment and equality.

                                                 Suffragettes protesting in Manchester, 1911

An homage to Tom Thomson

A decade ago, I found myself in Canada on a Sunday morning with a few hours to spare. At that time of the day, in that season, Edmonton, Alberta, was a silent, sleepy city. The sky seemed endless and freezing; the next day, the first snows of the season would fall and cloak the place in a blanket of white. That last Sunday in October, it was a city of pealing church bells and hise rise blocks, where a lone, nonchalent moose walked slowly down the highway. Wooden porches were deocrated with carved pumpkins and muddy boots. I set off, looking to kill some time, finding the place practically deserted and most of the shops closed. One building promised warmth and comfort; the doors of the art gallery stood open and invited me inside.

I had never heard of Tom Thomson before that day. As I entered, he stuck me at once; large, post-impressionistic canvases full of loose vivid brushwork in deep, generous colours. The images of autumnal trees and snowy rivers, of the wild and beautiful wilderness of Algonquin park faced me as I crossed the hall to read about this artist whose name was new to me. Slowly, I unravelled the facts. In fact, this was no straightforward exhibition, but the imaginings of a later artist, resurrecting Thomson and filling in his "missing" years. The mystery of his life unfolded before me; his importance, isolation and unsolved death.

Thomson was born in 1877 near Ontario. His attempts to enlist in both the Boer War and Great War were refused due to an underlying medical condition and abortive attempts to work as a fire ranger and study business betrayed his true calling. He blossomed late; in 1907, he joined a firm called Grip Ltd, an artistic design firm where he would meet many of the other artists who later came to be known as the Gang of Seven. Together they travelled into the countryside, inspired by the loneliness and beauty of the Saskatchewan river and its surroundings. On long camping trips between 1914 and 1917, he produced many of the images for which he is now famous, his style rapidly maturing as he became increasingly focused on his work. In July 1917, he disappeared on a canoeing trip to Algonquin park, his body being found a week later in the lake. Even today, theories about the circumstances of his death encompass accident and murder and have spawned their own novels romanticising his life.

The truth of Thomson's death may never be known but the vivid, brilliant legacy of his work will continue to move those who see it today. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau, whilst combining the plein air elements of Impressionism with the freedom of Post-Impressionism, his pictures contain a vibrancy and life comparable to Cezanne and Van Gogh; like the latter, he died mysteriously at the peak of his self-taught genuis, after a flourishing of his creativity. When I left the gallery that Sunday morning, suprised at the impact upon of this chance encounter, I knew I had to find out more about Thomson. Later, battling through the snow, I had the opportunity to scour Edmonton's bookshops for a suitable tome, which I struggled to fit into my already-stuffed  suitcase. In those pre-Amazon, early days of the internet, I knew I would not easily find such a work in England. Having been an habitue of book shops of all varieties, I had never before seen any study dedicated to Thomson. But the book and the memory came back with me. A decade later, these images continue to have a profound effect on me, as does the conviction that his oeuvre still lacks the UK following that it deserves.

England's Green and Pleasant Lands: Edwardian artists react to Futurism.

                                "Speeding Automobile,"  Giacomo Balla, 1912

                               Prampolini's portrait of Filippo Marinetti, 1924-5

In the years immediately preceding the Great War, the vanguard of European art strove to depict the new century’s potential in startling new images. In March 1912, 40,000 people attended an exhibition of the Italian Futurists in London’s Sackville Gallery, encouraged by the inflammatory reviews of a national press who understood its readers’ traditional, bucolic tastes. Broadly, the Futurist intention was to liberate art from tradition, including the destruction of libraries and museums as institutions guilty of ossifying taste and preventing the advancement of the modern: it favoured war, machines, movement and masculine energy. English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell conceded that “the modern world calls for such a philosophy,” in which, according to the Bergson theory, the dynamic sensation was itself made eternal, establishing the Futurist preoccupation with the innovations in transport that typified their decade. However, as when presented with most artistic innovations, the great British public were less than enthusiastic.

                                                                      

                               
                                    "Expansion centrifuge de la luminere"                               
                                                Gino Severini 1913-14

                          (This sold for £157,750 at Christie's in December 2000)

To the Pall Mall Gazette, the experience was a “nightmare;” the Daily Express concurred in the view that Futurism was “the new terror,” filing its response under the heading “Picture Gallery of a Madhouse: Crazy Dreams put on Canvas.” The Morning Post refused to allow its critics even to review it, as “an immorality (which) must not be chronicled,” while the Manchester Evening News saw a connection between the “anarchic” paintings and a recent attempt at royal assassination in Rome. The Times reacted to perceived ugliness in the works: “the more intelligible the pictures, the more commonplace they appear…a perfectly commonplace picture of a very ugly woman” and Frank Rutter in the Sunday supplement wrote that “all London is talking of the Italian artists at the Sackville Gallery” even though “all their little novelties have already been paraded in Paris by men as able and abler than themselves.” Sir Philip Burne Jones, child of Pre-Raphaelitism, was “outraged by these ludicrous productions …outside the place of art altogether." Despite the hostile reaction, Futurist leader Marinetti felt he had found the ideal location for the new movement, claiming in interviews that “London is a futurist city…(with) a totally new idea of motion, of speed.” Some English artists agreed.

However, in others, this savage machine-age art elicited a very different response. The pre-war work of Slade students Paul Nash, Dora Carrington and their circle, drew inspiration from the English landscape, work and rural life, as the setting for biblical or mythological narratives. Seeing the mysteries of ancient Britain in the modern landscape, they “Cezannified” an existing tradition in order to forge a real national alternative to European Post-Impressionism; not avant-garde but modern, vibrant and capturing the Edwardian zeitgeist. The contemporary nostalgia and tendency to define “connection between land, countryside and nation as somehow innately English” had been fed by the establishment of the National Trust in 1895 and launch of the magazine “Country Life” two years later. With the increasing urbanisation of the population and spread of suburban living, a wide range of books were published on rural activities, aimed at “the villa residents and the more numerous others living in London.” Camden artist Spencer Gore’s beautiful images of Letchworth celebrated the town’s establishment as the first Garden City. The Slade students were following the tradition of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the proliferation after 1905, of fashionable, pastoralist “back to nature” movements.

                                         Letchworth, Spencer Gore, 1912

The works of Nash and Carrington went beyond simply capturing the popular mood, though. Their primitive, expressionistic elements ensured them a place in the Post-Impressionist canon and provoked strong responses among friends and rivals alike. Nash’s stunning 1912 “The Pyramids in the Sea,” employs a dark, intense palette that retains the sombriety of Sickertian tones but substitutes a grey-blueness, capturing a sense of sinister, nocturnal drama. The simple but startling presence of surreal forms rising from the waves is resonant of a Blakean nightmare, sublime in beauty and terror, foreshadowing Nash’s post-war symbolic and emotional landscapes. A similar palette and style marks the early works of his associates: curved, womanly, idyllic landscapes in light airy blue, russet, yellow and green. In order to capture Elgar’s “Land of Hope and Glory” they looked to classical English landscape, eighteenth century poetry, romantic artists and the Pre-Raphaelites as well as other influences closer to home. The landscapes produced by Paul and John Nash, Dora Carrington, Stanley Spencer and their friends Gwen Darwin and Christine Kuhlenthal between 1912 and 1914 epitomised the traditional English love of the land, whilst introducing a new national palette, abstraction of patterns and an almost surreal interpretation of the artist’s emotional connection with the land.

                                     Paul Nash's Pyramids in the Sea, 1912

Carrington’s 1912 fresco panel “Picking vegetables” captured an idyllic symbolism and rhythm of rural life, with a mass of fluid Cezannish trees placed behind an almost Van Gogh-yellow curve of fields and pointillist trees. Two men are engaged in hoeing, bent at the waist, their motion echoed by the boy picking a cabbage, monolithic in quality and representing the harmony between mankind and the fertile landscape. Carrington contrasts the cultivated and the wild: abundant crops sit beside wild flowers, open fields contrast with dense woodland. Varieties of land use are portrayed in a pleasing, non-threatening vision of unity, while the waiting mother holds an empty basket, ready to take the produce to the kitchen or market stall. Similar fresco panels, “Hay Making” and “Sheep Shearing,” on which Carrington collaborated with Constance Lane in 1913, present the beauty and harmony of men engaged in rural tasks, in a light, airy palette. Writing to John Nash during her stay with Constance’s mother outside Hemel Hempstead, her belief in the function of art as expressive of a deep seated, passionate appreciation for the countryside is evident:

       “…it is a most wonderful country. You and Paul should just see the trees and

           green fields like lettuces, you could eat them, they are so luscious. And black

           sheep making patterns on the green fields…I (did)…some amazing landscapes

          …the best was a long-shaped upright panel with a moon on a sky glazed with

       many colours…green, blue-pink, dull mauve…what good shapes the trees make

           in this light.”

                           A later (1924) work by Carrington of Spanish hills.

However, there is very definitely the sense that Carrington’s enjoyment of the countryside was as an artist rather than a participant in rural life:

        “…about six workmen are running about…Lane and I feel like great masters

              controlling this band of men”
It is difficult to escape the “Marie Antoinette plays shepherdess” response to Carrington’s bucolic idylls, where art divides people along class lines into creators and workers, idealised through her portrayal. Her later, war-time landscapes of the hills around her home, would present a maturer vision, infused with emotional symbolism and hints of the surreal.

Symbolic landscape was the most preferable alternative for many young artists who rejected the more avant garde aspects of Post-Impressionism. Furthermore, its synonymity with Englishness made it more relevant and attractive, particularly among the Slade graduates. John Nash’s wife, Christine Kuhlenthal’s “The Picnic” of 1914 is heavy with nationalistic iconography. The neat lawn, enclosed by white picket fence protects and gives access onto a gentle rolling landscape of cultivated and uncultivated fields. Tall, white lilies soften the harsh line of the fence, exotic, elegant and protected within the garden. A distant lake lies silver and tranquil before misty blue-mauve hills and glimmers of gold in the west suggest the approach of sunset. Beneath the apple tree’s peeling bark, a man and woman face a second seated woman in bright golden dress, balancing an apple upon her head, suggestive of the William Tell legend, although there is no one to displace it. Apples are visible still growing on the tree and on the grass to the woman’s right, half red, half green, paradoxically symbolic of national identity and temptation. More subtle symbolism is at work here than in Nash or Spencer; the idyllically tranquil scene, with harmonious figures and colours, presents a protected environment that develops Arts and Crafts traditions. However, the picture contains the possibility of biting the apple, opening the gate and pursuing the path down towards the lake. This landscape is troubled by the subtle possibility of disharmony.

                                         John Nash, The Cornfield, 1912

The new English landscapes aimed to capture the spirit of ancient Britain and explore man’s relationship with the countryside as a specific function of nationality. In the search for a modern British art, such images capture a new artistic spirit emerging beyond the Edwardian era, invigorated by personal response to recent French developments but retaining reverence for the past. Additionally, woodgraver Gwen Darwin, sculptor Eric Gill, landscape painter J.D.Innes and allegorical artist Stanley Spencer’s responses to their rural environment prove the spread and depth of this era’s veneration of a world that was about to vanish. Now, the pathos of these scenes lies in our hindsight of the approach of war that would transform the Nash brothers' landscapes and curtail the glorious Edwardian flourish of artistic experiment.