.. that by the liberality of the inhabitants [of Newcastle], it would soon be supplied with pictures and statuary for the encouragement and development of British Art.
Alexander Laing writing of the Gallery he founded
A few weeks back, I visited Newcastle's Laing Art Gallery, founded in 1901 by a local businessperson, Alexander Laing, who made his fortune bottling beer and selling wine and spirits. There's always been a good market for those in the Northeast.
The quotation above from Laing indicates that while he financed the building of the gallery, he left it down to the people of Newcastle to find and finance the works of art it was to contain.
And those people responded marvellously as the gallery now houses an impressive permanent collection of British and European fine and decorative arts and a growing collection of contemporary art. Among the highlights are paintings by William Holman Hunt and Edward Burne-Jones of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Post-Impressionism pieces by Paul Gauguin, and the work of Victor Pasmore, who pioneered Abstract art in Britain. John Martin, the Victorian visionary artist from the Northeast, also has an extensive collection of works. In addition, 20th-century artists include the British Impressionist Laura Knight, the abstract work of Ben Nicholson and Gillian Ayres and one of the 'Whitechapel Boys' David Bomberg and his complex geometric compositions. The museum also holds a sizeable decorative art collection featuring Beilby enamelled glass, Sowerby glass, Newcastle silver, Maling ceramics and Northeast pottery.
I visited this occasion to see the 'Essence of Nature' Exhibition. An opportunity to meander between close to one hundred oils and watercolours by some sixty leading artists from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Rural Naturalist and British Impressionist schools. The Exhibition offering a view of the artist's radically different approaches to depicting the natural world.
I began with the Pre-Raphaelites' ideal of 'truth to nature' represented by such artists as Holman Hunt, John Brett, Anna Blunden, William Dyce, and John Ruskin. Ruskin, also an influential art critic, proposed that artists should aim to record nature, "rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing". Ruskin venerated mountain landscapes for what he saw as their purity and spiritual character. Always keen to encourage new talent, he helped William Inchbold financially to travel to Switzerland to paint. His piece 'The Lake of Lucerne: Mont Pilatus in the Distance' from that visit was on display. Holman Hunt described this painting as "really a very beautiful one". However, Ruskin disliked Inchbold's inclusion of houses and gardens around the lake's edge as he felt it sullied the mountain's purity.
Other Pre-Raphaelite works on show included some from Holman Hunt's mid-1850s travels to the Holy Land to research topographical and ethnographical material for further religious works. On display were his 'Distant View of Nazareth' and 'The Plain of Rephaim from Zion'. Another of Holman Hunt's paintings was the arid landscape of 'Cornfield at Ewell'. As preferred by Pre-Raphaelite painters, the scene was captured directly from nature at Holman Hunt's uncle's farm in Ewell in Surrey. Also in this section was William Dyce's 1860 'Henry VI at Towton', showing the Lancastrian Monarch suitably downcast after losing the battle there some four hundred years before the painting. Dyce's portrayal of the 17th Century poet and priest George Herbert shows him in his rectory garden dressed in a cassock with the spire of Salisbury Cathedral in the background. Fishing tackle lies by a tree as a reminder that Herbert's first biographer was Izaak Walton, author of 'The Compleat Angler.'
There were pieces from leading Rural Naturalist painters, including George Clausen's 'Peasant Girl Carrying a Jar, Quimperlé'. A picture that seems influenced by the conventions of late 19th-century photography in its uncompromising directness. The girl poses slightly awkwardly, as if in that fixed fashion of early photography. There is uncertainty on the girl's face, and her homespun clothes reflect a life of poverty and hard work. Henry La Thangue also captures the labour of country life in 'Gathering Bracken'. He, too, painted en plein air but turned away from the hyper-real detail of Pre-Raphaelite art to, in his mind, better capture the character and atmosphere of rural working landscapes. In contrast, Edward Stott's 'Changing Pastures' composition is based on a network of right angles, depicting a young female cowherd and animals merged into the landscape and dissolving into the surrounding atmosphere.
As can be imagined, light and colour characterised the British Impressionist paintings of nature that were on display. Pieces that showed gentle scenes of sunny hillsides and orchards were balanced by those showing the hard labour that went into the working of the land. Painters here included Wynford Dewhurst, Henry Scott Tuke, Ethel Walker and Philip Steer, considered the founder of the British Impressionist movement.
Steer's painting in the Exhibition 'An Upland Landscape' captures well the essence of the beauty and serenity of the uplands near Stroud in Gloucestershire, looking across the Severn Valley. In primarily earthy tones, the painting offers a sense of peace and calm in portraying the vast expanse of rolling hills, lush green fields, and winding streams. The scene is so realistic that it’s as if you stand in the middle of those fields, with a gentle breeze on your face while surveying that beautiful landscape.
Steer dared to upset the likes of Monet in 1905 by writing an article for 'The Burlington Magazine' in which Steer argued that Constable was the "father of Impressionism". He pointed to Constable's use of light and colour and his emphasis on the effects of atmosphere as crucial influences on the Impressionists.
"Constable was the first of the great landscape painters to realise the full possibilities of light and colour as elements of design. He was also the first to see that the effects of atmosphere are an essential part of landscape painting. In this respect, he was the true forerunner of the Impressionists."
At the time, Monet and those other early French Impressionists still living vehemently denied that influence and disagreed with Steer. Maybe what aggrieved Monet was that he preferred the work of Constable's great rival Turner. Indeed, from an exhibition I attended nearly twenty years ago at London's Tate, the art of Whistler and Monet, who were friends and collaborators, appears influenced by the pattern of themes and variations begun by Turner. While there is also some influence on the early Impressionists from Constable, to what degree is still debated by art historians today.
But to return to the Exhibition. There was a representation of the artists of Cornwall's Newlyn and St Ives Schools with SJL Birch's 'The Morning Mist' and Stanhope Forbes's 'Children in a Garden' along with other scenes of beaches, cliffs, and riversides, painted en plein air. One, Laura Knight's 'The Beach’, showing children in Edwardian dress paddling happily, clearly was so as conservators have found grains of sand within the paint despite the almost two square metre canvas. It’s the middle of the giant copies of some of the gallery’s paintings that can be seen in my photograph.
And my favourite? It was 'In the Spring Time' by Harold Knight (husband of Laura). Painted in the early 20th century in an Impressionist style, it shows a young man and a young woman sitting outdoors, under a tree, at a small table, drinking tea. He dressed in a careworn suit. Her clothes are a little more sophisticated. The couple sit opposite each other in a comfortable atmosphere of relaxed conversation. Knight captures the sun-dappled scene of what might be young love or siblings sharing quiet time. Knight was maybe not the master of light as, say, Sorolla, but this painting still catches the eye, holds your gaze, and makes you ponder who the couple might be and of what they converse.
Overall, I found ‘Essence of Nature’ an engaging exhibition curated well in playing to the strengths of an Edwardian gallery setting. The exhibition was also popular with the public of Newcastle, given the number there on my visit. Although not so overcrowded, you struggled to study and appreciate the works on display. And best of all, for once, I didn't see a single photograph taken by those around me. A rare occurrence these days when increasing numbers of art exhibition attendees spend their time looking at paintings through the viewfinder of a camera rather than at the works themselves. Something that those who know me know is a particular beef of mine.
A fascinating read Harry and I’m delighted / relieved that the exhibition was a photography free zone.
What a fascinating piece, Harry. Lots to digest and come back to. I realise how little I know of art ... thank you for opening me up to a good deal more.