Radev Revisited

Two years ago a post appeared here about The Radev Collection: from Pissarro to Picasso at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, an exhibition during the Collection’s 2011-13 UK tour. Now on at the same location is The Radev Show 2, and again visitors can be sure to find something they will like. There was some background to the Collection’s formation in the previous post, so I won’t repeat it here.

Some of the works on show last time have come back to Bath, like Modigliani’s Portrait of Soutine and Jawlensky’s Blaue Strasse c1916 (below, left and right):

Others are having a first showing: Vanessa Bell, Vase, Hat and Flowers, 1910 and a couple of Duncan Grant ceramic table-tops c 1950 (below, top and lower):

One of the originators of the Collection was Eardley Knollys, co-partner in the Storan Gallery in the inter-war period. Two pictures now in the Tate Gallery which were purchased from the Storan originally have been leant for this show, Maurice Utrillo’s Eglise de St Hilaire (Church at St Hilaire, c 1911, below left) and Chaïm Soutine’s La Route de la colline (Vence) (The Road up the Hill, c1924, below right):

However, as in 2012, most of the works in the exhibition are by British artists (more Ben Nicholson and Alfred Wallis!) and, as I said then, “Anyone interested in British 20th century art should try to see it” – again, possibly. The Radev Show 2 ends on 31 August. There might be a clue as to why the Radev Collection has returned to Bath towards the end of this post.

'Art and Life' at Dulwich

Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray, 1920 – 1931 is now at Dulwich Picture Gallery after spells at Leeds Museums and Galleries and Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. Earlier posts here have covered shows at Compton Verney in 2011 which examined the impact on Ben Nicholson of encountering Alfred Wallis in 1928, and at the Courtauld in 2012 which examined Nicholson’s work in the 1930s after his encounter with Mondrian. The Dulwich show (Art and Life from now on) looks at an earlier period starting with Ben Nicholson’s marriage to Winifred in 1920, then the couple’s meeting Kit Wood in 1926, the three artists’ responses to Alfred Wallis in 1928 and ends with the Nicholson’s separation, de facto after 1931. Art and Life features more than 80 works, some 15 of which have been exhibited publicly for the first time and many are on loan from “Private Collection”. It includes items by the potter William Staite Murray who often exhibited with the Nicholsons. The show has been curated by the art historian Jovan Nicholson, Ben and Winifred’s grandson, who gave a very informative lecture, Art and Life: Ben and Winifred Nicholson, at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival.

Art and Life can be regarded primarily as a portrait of an artists’ marriage – for the years it lasted. Ben and Winifred both came from upper class backgrounds, his father being the painter Sir William Nicholson and her family being north of England aristocrats with unusually artistic inclinations. The exhibition starts early in their married life when they were painting together at Lugano, producing work like his Cortivallo Lugano 1921 (below, top) and her Window Sill Lugano (below, lower) and Cyclamen and Primula (poster above), both 1923, the year of their first joint exhibition:

They would often produce works on the same theme, thoughtfully juxtaposed like many of the exhibits, for example the moorland scenery in 1920 at Tippacott (Devon, SW England), her Watercolour below top, his Pencil Drawing below, lower:

The consensus seems to be that at this stage of their artistic lives, his work is more concerned with form, hers with colour. This is, of course, with the benefit of retrospect from the 1930s when he is clearly far more interested in form than colour. In 1923 the Nicholsons began to spend time at Bankshead in Cumbria near Hadrian’s Wall and the exhibition includes further examples of the same landscape being pictured by both. What is apparent is how anodyne their work seems in comparison with that of avant garde artists like Malevich a decade earlier. Soon three works by Ben Nicholson indicate an interest in something more unconventional: 1924 (First Abstract Painting, Chelsea) (below, top left), Jamaique, circa 1925 (below, top right) and Still Life with Jug Mugs Cup and Goblet, 1925 (below, lower):

In 1926 Ben met Christopher Wood who later took a painter’s holiday with the Nicholsons in Cornwall (SW England), before the area’s revival of interest to artists. Wood’s Pill Creek Eock Cornwall, 1928 (below top) and Winifred Nicholson’s Summer, 1928 (below, lower) are among the three’s responses:

Soon they met Alfred Wallis in St Ives. Wallis was a retired mariner and prolific painter of self-taught sea studies like The Schooner the Beata, Penzance, Mount’s Bay, and Newlyn Harbour, undated (below, left) and St Ives Harbour, circa 1932-34 (below, right):

which made a lasting impression on all three artists, particularly Ben, Cornish Port, circa 1930, (below, top) and Wood, Le Phare, 1929 (below middle), perhaps less so Winifred, Seascape with Two Boats, circa 1932 (below, lowest):

although her Autumn Flowers on a Mantelpiece shows a small Wallis. Then came the climactic events of 1930: Ben Nicholson’s meeting Barbara Hepworth and Christopher Wood’s suicide at Salisbury station. Wood’s influence on Ben is apparent later that year in 1930 (Christmas night):

By the end of 1931, the year Winifred gave birth to their third child, Andrew, the Nicholson’s relationship had sundered. The saddest pictures in the exhibition are Wood’s The Fisherman’s Farewell, 1928 (below, top) and her Jake and Kate on the Isle of Wight, 1931 (below, lower):

Art and Life provides a welcome opportunity to see several works by Wood, for example Blue Necklace, 1928 (his mistress, Frosca Munswer) and Zebra and Parachute, 1930. The final exhibits in the show go beyond its nominal dates, but are of considerable interest including Ben’s 1935 (White Relief) and an abstract by Winifred, White and Black Ellipse, Outwards, 1936. The Nicholsons did not divorce until 1938 when Ben married Barbara. The famous Hepworth triplets had been born in 1934.

Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray*, 1920 – 1931 ends at Dulwich on 21 September 2014, nearly a year after it began at Leeds.

*Ben Nicholson 1894 - 1982
Winifred Nicholson 1893 - 1981
Christopher Wood 1901 - 1930
Alfred Wallis 1855 - 1942
William Staite Murray 1881 - 1962

The Radev Collection reaches Bath

The Radev Collection is described as being “The private picture collections of: Eardley Knollys (1902 - 1991), Eddy Sackville-West (1901 – 1965) and Mattei Radev (1927 - 2009). Bequeathed in friendship, begun in 1938, and preserved in the 21st Century.” Some of the history of the Collection, and of the “male salon” which formed it, can be found on its website. Each of the three men added to the Collection of 800 works which mirror their differing interests: Knollys in French artists acquired through his gallery which in turn Sackville-West patronised for Modernist pieces. Knollys inherited from Sackville-West in 1965 and later left their combined collections to Radev.

A selection of works from the Radev Collection is currently on a UK tour which began in 2011 and will end in 2013. Curiously, on the first two stops, in Chichester and Lincoln, its title was The Radev Collection – Bloomsbury and Beyond, but at Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery it has become The Radev Collection: from Pissarro to Picasso (at the time of writing, on their website as “Pisarro – Piccasso”). The current title has the virtue of accuracy, Radev’s connection with the Bloomsbury Group being a little tenuous despite the Pallant House Gallery’s description of him as “a feature of artistic and literary Bloomsbury society”. For example, one of the leading Bloomsberries, Vanessa Bell, three of whose works are in the Collection, was born in 1879 and was in her seventies when Radev arrived in the UK from Bulgaria. Eddy, on the other hand, was Vita Sackville-West’s nephew and in the 1920s mixed with the Bloomsbury set at Charleston and elsewhere, though perhaps not on such intimate terms as his aunt.

Visitors to the exhibition will see unfamiliar works of an agreeably domestic scale by British and international artists including Keith Vaughan, Duncan Grant, Ivon Hitchens, Maurice Denis, Jean Metzinger, Jean Millet, Amedeo Modigliani (on the website, “Modigliano”). and Lucien Pissarro. Artists shown who have featured in previous posts here include Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Ben Nicholson (Carbis Bay 1942, left), Alfred Wallis and Christopher Wood.

There is also an opportunity to see works by Winifred Nicholson, Henry Lamb and Matthew Smith (Cornish flowers c1920, right), British artists who are perhaps less well-known than they were. As well as the Vanessa Bell, Bloomsbury fans can enjoy several works by Duncan Grant (Brighton pier and boats 1938, below)

Two notable pieces are the bronze by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Bronze Dancer 1913 (left) and Blaue strasse c 1916, (below) by Alexei Jawlensky, the Russian Expressionist who painted in Germany with Der Blau Reiter.

The Radev Collection: from Pissarro to Picasso continues in Bath until 18 November. It re-appears in Falmouth Art Gallery, Cornwall in February 2013 retitled again, this time as A Framer's Collection. Radev’s abilities in this regard are clear from the exhibits like the Smith above. Next summer the tour will return to London at the Redfern Gallery and end the year at the Abbott Hall Art Gallery in Kendal. Anyone interested in British 20th century art should try to see it. The exhibition catalogue provides more details of the Collection's founders and history as well as  responses from the curators of its tour, but is a little expensive at £5-70. However admission in Bath is free.

Alfred Wallis at Compton Verney

Compton Verney in Warwickshire is a handsomely set Georgian mansion which has been transformed into an art gallery with the support of the Peter Moores Foundation. As well as its permanent collections, it hosts temporary exhibitions. Currently, but only to 6 June, works by Alfred Wallis and Ben Nicholson are on display, exploring “Wallis’ unique vision and his influence on Nicholson’s work, focusing on paintings and drawings by the two artists dating from the late 1920s to the 1940s.”

It is 90 years since Wallis was first exhibited in London, following his discovery as a primitive painter in St Ives (Cornwall, in SW England) by established artists in the late 1920s. Most of the exhibits at Compton Verney are of Wallis’ work, many from the extensive collection at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.  The three-room exhibition makes a fair case for Wallis’ influence on Nicholson, although there were clearly many others, including major artists such as Mondrian and Picasso and movements such as cubism.

With the recent opening of The Hepworth Wakefield, Barbara Hepworth’s life and work is receiving more attention than in previous years. It is helpful by way of background to some of the Compton Verney exhibits to know that Nicholson (1894-1982) married and divorced three times:
1920-1938 Winifred Roberts (three children)
1938-1951 Barbara Hepworth (triplets)
1957-1977 Felicitas Vogler

Compton Verney has in the past put on some first class exhibitions, for example Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors in 2006 and The Naked Portrait in 2007. However, some potential visitors to their next major exhibition, Stanley Spencer and the English Garden, may well be deterred by the pricing. Because this show will coincide with the “peak rate” period, and because exhibition admission is only available bundled with admission to the grounds and permanent collections, the Adult ticket will cost £13.20 (there are concessions). This seems steep for its likely scale, particularly for anyone contemplating a second visit to Compton Verney within a few months, and who has already had an opportunity to admire the restored ice house.

Restored ice house at Compton Verney, Warwickshire