British Romantic Art and the Second World War

257 Pages·1991·24.216 MB·English

by  Stuart Sillars (auth.)

BRITISH ROMANTIC ART
AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Also by Stuart Sillars
ART AND SURVJV AL IN FIRST WORLD WAR BRITAIN
British Rotnantic Art
and the
Second World War
STUART SILLARS
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-09920-7 ISBN 978-1-349-09918-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09918-4
(~)Stuart Sillars 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 978-0-333-45559-3
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-06719-9
Ubrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sillars, Stuart, 1951-
British romantic art and the Second World War I Stuart Sillars
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-06719-9
1. Neoromanticism (Art movement)-Great Britain. 2. Arts,
British. 3. Arts, modem-20th century-Great Britain. 4. World
War,-1939-1945-Art and the war. I. Title.
NX543.S52 1991
700'dc20 91-17375
CIP
Ihr nacht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten!
Die frtih sich einst dem trtiben Blick gezeigt.
Versuch' ich wahl, euch diesmal festzuhalten?
Fiihl' ich mein Herz noch jenem Wahn geneigt?
Ihr drangt euch zu! nu gut, so mogt ihr walten,
Wie ihr aus Dunst und Nebel urn mich steigt;
Mein Busen fiihlt sich jugendlich erschiittert
Vom Zauberhauch, der euren Zug umwittert.
J. von Goethe, Faust, Dedication
OMS
1904-1990
Contents
List of fllustrations viii
Acknowledgements IX
1 Some Versions of Romanticism 1
2 The Romantic Continuity 14
3 Romantic Realism 51
4 Blitz Sublime 78
5 The Nurturing Earth 98
6 A Child of Our Time 124
7 Midwinter Spring 142
8 Roots that Clutch 183
Notes 198
Select Bibliography 224
Index 228
vii
List of Illustrations
1 The Passage to the Control Room at S. W. Regional Headquarters,
by John Piper (Trustees of the Imperial War Museum).
2 The Withdrawal from Dunkirk, by Charles Cundall (Trustees of
the Imperial War Museum).
3 The Return from Dunkirk, by Muirhead Bone (Trustees of the
Imperial War Museum).
4 The Tube, October, 1940, by Feliks Topolski (Trustees of the
Imperial War Museum).
5 The Trek to the shelter- Silvertown, September 1940, by Edward
Ardizzone (Trustees of the Imperial War Museum).
6 Bombed out, Bermondsey, by Ethel Gabain (South London Art
Gallery, London Borough of Southwark).
7 St. Clement Dane's Church on Fire after being Bombed, by Henry
Carr (Trustees of the Imperial War Museum).
8 Bristol, November 24th, 1940, by Frank Dobson (City of Bristol
Museum and Art Gallery).
9 A House Collapsing on two Firemen, Shoe Lane, London EC4, by
Leonard Rosoman (Trustees of the Imperial War Museum).
10 Your Britain- Fight for it Now series: Village Green, by Frank
Newbould (Trustees of the Imperial War Museum).
11 Devastation, 1941, City: Fallen Lift Shaft, by Graham Sutherland
(Trustees of the Imperial War Museum).
12 Your Britain - Fight for it Now series: 'Clean, airy and
well-planned dwellings', by Abram Games (Trustees of the
Imperial War Museum).
viii
Acknowledgements
Any book of this sort is to some degree a collaborative effort and
I am glad to thank many people for their help in its writing. The
staff of the University Library, Cambridge were as always patient
and encyclopaedic. The Rev Brian Ruddock provided much helpful
advice about the painting by Cecil Collins discussed in Chapter 5;
Carol C. Abdo, of Clare Hall, Cambridge, read parts of the text in
early draft and offered much help and support. Jenny Wood, of the
Department of Art, Imperial War Museum, answered many specific
queries and gave invaluable assistance with the illustrations. The
staffs of the South London Art Gallery, London Borough of South
wark, and the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, helped in
the reproduction of pictures by Frank Dobson and Henry Carr
respectively. Sarah Dann and Margaret Cannon of the Macmillan
Press gave encouragement and practical help in no small measure;
Anthony Grahame edited the text with great accuracy and tact.
Despite this plethora of assistance, those errors, omissions and
examples of wilful perversity which remain are my sole responsi
bility.
March, Cambridgeshire, 1990
STUART SILLARS
ix
1
Some Versions
of Romanticism
1
Entrance to a Lane1 is a painting that impresses us at once with its
immediacy. We are drawn into the pool of light of the lane itself
by a composition which has all the clarity of Turner's vortices
yet none of their frenzy. A series of roughly ovoid forms linked
to stems in the top quarter of the foreground tell us that we are
standing beneath a tree; the balance of deep, cool greens and rich,
hot ochres not only reveals the landscape before us but presents
the still air through which it is seen. A white rectangle receding
in the centre is the lane itself; to its right a further wall of ochre
sharply defines the 'entrance' and then, further back, melts with a
sombre grey as the lane recedes. Alive with experience, the image
is no less essentially a painting: the bird suggested at eye-height
is a trompe l'oeil impasto streak, the changing textures of path and
foliage are rough stipple work, the heat between us and the land is
the medium brushed porcelain-smooth. The painting's rhythms are
at once those of a fragment of experience - 'where you lean against
a bank while the van passes? perhaps- and those of an abstract
pattern, circling yet static, recessive yet of one surface. It is, in short,
a painting which embodies and revitalises attitudes and techniques
which are the essence of English Romanticism; and it was painted
in 1939.
Graham Sutherland's painting is one of the finest, as well as one
of the earliest, examples of something which for a while accounted
for a dominant tradition in British painting and writing in the central
decades of this century. It is something which has recently become
known as 'neo-Romanticism', and those who worked within its
shores regarded as a school of 'neo-Romantics'. This is not a term