The Class of 1904 part 2…
Nora Cundell
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| Nora Cundell, Self Portrait on horseback, Marble Canyon, Unsentimental Journey, 1940, p. 95. |
Nora Lucy Mowbray Cundell, who was born in May 1889, was a
student at the Blackheath School of Art in 1904 and lived locally. In their review of the show,
Arts and Crafts Magazine described Cundell’s work as spirited in its conception
in comparison with those of another student.[1]
Art was in the Cundell genes as her father had exhibited with the Stock
Exchange Art Group and his father, her grandfather Henry Cundell, was a renowned
landscape painter. After leaving the Blackheath School of Art, Cundell studied
at the Westminster Technical Institute under Sickert and then at the Slade from
1911 to 1914 and also in 1919. Many of Cundell’s works reflect the extravagant
realism of Sickert and critics in the 1940’s allied this with the belief that
her Dutch heritage brought to the fore an influence of Dutch seventeenth
century artists like Pieter De Hooch and Johannes Vermeer.[2]
Whilst works of this era are in UK collections such as the Tate[3]
this is not the area of her career that I wish to focus on here.
I hope it is not too patronising to label Nora Cundell as a
prototypical modern woman. From the early 1930’s she travelled on her own to
the US and came to be accepted as a native Arizonan. She enjoyed her time in
Arizona so much that she travelled there every year from then through to her
death in 1948. In Arizona Cundell formed a close affinity with the landscape
and people of Marble Canyon. She spent time with the Native Americans,
especially the Navajo, in Arizona painting portraits and creating landscapes
focusing on the desert.[4]
It has been noted that her time in Arizona and south west USA greatly
influenced her use of colour, lightening her palette.[5]
The expressive use of colour from this period, in paintings like Marble Canyon, Arizona,[6]
contrasts markedly with the more earthy realism of paintings like The Back
Parlour, Café Loos, Étaples, France.[7]
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| Nora Cundell, An old Navajo who came to trade, (see note 4). |
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| Nora Cundell, Marble Canyon, Arizona, oil on board, Museum of North Arizona, Flagstaff. |
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| Nora Cundell,The Back Parlour, Café Loos, Étaples, France, Atkinson Gallery Collection. |
Cundell published a book, Unsentimental Journey, telling the
story of her numerous solo trips to the USA, travelling from New York to
Arizona. The book itself is a revelation of anecdotes and observations of the
unusual world of America through the eyes of an English woman travelling on her
own to the Wild West. Cundell’s strong will comes to the fore in this tome as
this was not seen to be the type of journey a British woman would make at this
time, let alone on her own. Following her death in Windsor in August 1948 her
ashes were brought back to the USA. Her ashes were scattered in Arizona, at the
base of Vermilion Cliffs in May 1949.[8]
In the history of the Conservatoire and Blackheath Art Schools I would dare to
say that she would rate as one of the most fiercely independent and pioneering
women.[9]
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| Nora Cundell, A Part of the Arizona Landscape, Unsentimental Journey, 1940, p. 139. |
[1]
Arts and Crafts Magazine – ‘In spirited conception, at least, Miss Norah
Cundell is not far behind Miss Stanton, in her Nursery Panel of a Children's
Cake-Walk’. In the 1911 Royal Academy Exhibition catalogue Cundell's contact address is listed as Llantarnam House, Blackheath, S.E. The picture she exhibited was catalogue no. 721 - Five O'Clock.
[3]
Nora Cundell, Smiling Woman, 1922,
Tate Gallery - http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/nora-lm-cundell-967
Other works can be seen in the Museum of the Order of St John, London and
Rochdale Arts and Heritage Service - http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/nora-lucy-mowbray-cundell
[4] Old Navajo who came to trade, taken from Unsentimental Journey facing page 156.
[5]
Shaw Cable, P, Impressionist Imprints in South Western Art, 2014. Essay written
to accompany the El Paso Museum of Art exhibition Renoir to Remington:
Impressionism to the American West which compares and contrasts Cundell’s Portrait of a Navajo Woman (1939) with
Renoir’s Heads of Two Young Girls.
[6]
Image sourced from Arizona Daily Sun 16 November 2012. The painting also
featured as catalogue no 13 in the exhibition Arizona’s Pioneering Women Artists at the Museum of Northern
Arizona, Flagstaff, Arizona from 17 November 2012 to 12 May 2013.
[7]
The Back Parlour, Café Loos, Étaples, France, Atkinson Gallery Collection.
Image sourced from BBC Your Paintings website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/the-back-parlour-cafe-loos-taples-france-65885
[8] One Page History of Nora Cundell’s Life from
Spring 1934 – May 1949, Colorado Plateau Archives. According to the
document Shine Smith scattered her ashes in Marble Canyon and a brass plate was
erected commemorating this which read: ‘Nora L M Cundell British artist and
author has returned to rest in the place she loved’.
[9] The
Galerie Gabrie website includes an anecdote that Cundell drove ambulances in
World War 2 - http://www.gabrie.com/#!nora-cundell/c17l7
I am hoping to find more details about this in the future.
