An early real life 'Indiana Jones' - 
Blackheath School of Art student Hugh Hopgood

It has a been a while since I have added an entry about the Blackheath School of Art and this artist was a bolt from the blue as I had never heard of Hugh Hopgood. His works can be found today in New York. Hopefully he will provide a little but of interest before I delve into the school in more detail under the leadership of John Edgar Platt as I have recently discovered that the British Library holds copies of the Blackheath Local Guide (more about these discoveries from this valuable source soon)...

Born in 1886 in Ryde on the Isle of Wight, Hugh Hopgood was one of two children of Richard and Sarah Hopgood. Hopgood was a student at the Blackheath School of Art and was listed as an art student in the 1911 census (the family lived at 40 Mayhill Road Charlton).

Hopgood was seen as a student of great promise and this was revealed in articles and exhibition reviews of the Blackheath School of Art in the early 1900’s. Hugh received a number of awards and certificates in 1908 including: certificates for anatomy, drawing from life and machine construction,   the drawing prize for ‘time studies from life’ and the Sketch Club prize.[1] Hopgood’s work was singled out for praise in the 1908 student’s exhibition. His ‘time studies’ were praised as were his book illustrations under the tutelage of Max Cowper.[2] In this discipline the author of a Kentish Mercury article felt that ‘Mr H Hopgood with his imagination and strength has a fine future’.[3] In 1910 Hopgood achieved a large number of accolades for his studies at the school. He could count amongst his achievements the King’s Prize for excellence in life drawing, National Book prize for sgraffito design on a vase, prize for works selected for competition, principal’s medal for time studies from life, first class certificates for drawing from life and the antique, and painting from still life and second class certificates for design and principles of ornament. [4]

Hopgood then travelled to Egypt as a member of a party to copy monuments in Egypt. He travelled with the renowned archaeologists Norman and Nina Davies, returning to Tilbury Docks in 1915.[5] He was travelling to Egypt as a part of a Metropolitan Museum of Art entourage to record certain paintings to ensure their posterity without damage. Even back then there was concern for the conservation of ancient paintings as their removal would result in irreparable damage or destruction. Hopgood also travelled to Egypt again in 1916 as manifests show that he returned to Plymouth from Alexandria on 21 April.[6]

Hugh Hopgood, Men Preparing Fish, Tomb Puyemre, tempera on paper, 1915 (?), Rogers Fund, 1930.
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hugh Hopgood and Nina Davies, Osiris and the Four Sons of Horus, Tomb of Nebamun and Ipuky, Thebes, tempera on paper, 1915 (?), Rogers Fund, 1930.
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The resultant works are on display in the Met in New York today, brilliantly brightly coloured tempera images on paper. Some of his works were collaborations with Nina Davies, one example featuring Osiris and Horus (above) from The Tomb of Nebamun and Ipuky, Thebes. Hopgood’s early skills with ‘time studies’ had held him in good stead. The colours are quite vibrant (in the reproductions) and I was quite surprised at how, even in the early years of the twentieth century that artists were employed to make facsimiles of ancient art rather than it being removed to be included in a museum collection.

Hugh Hopgood, Ceiling Fragment, Tomb of Amenemhat Surer, tempera on paper, 1915 (?), Rogers Fund, 1930.
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I have not come across much about Hopgood as an artist other than his work creating facsimiles for the museum. He joined the RAF later in the First World War, and electoral rolls recorded him living in the family home (1920), Chelsea (1922) and Croydon (1965). He was married to Bessie Flora Marks, a nurse, in December 1920. Hopgood died on 2 December 1976 in Croydon.[7] 

It’s great to be able to find out about BSA students becoming artists who worked in far off places - as he followed Nora Cundell to be one of the adventurous ex-students of the Art School. As with all entries I will update his biography as and when I come across more information.

---

[1] Blackheath School of Art: Distribution of Prizes by M David Murray, R.A., Kentish Mercury, Fri 6 March, 1908, p. 2. Nora Cundell also won the Sketch Club Prize in 1908. Hopgood’s brother Howard also achieved certificates for machine construction and drawing in 1908.

[2] Blackheath School of Art: Exhibition of Students’ Work, Kentish Mercury, Fri 2 October, 1908, p. 4.

[3] ibid.

[4] Blackheath School of Art: Distribution of Prizes by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, Kentish Mercury, Fri 11 February 1910, p. 2.

[5] Hopgood travelled with the Davies’ on the ship Gloucestershire in 1915.

[6] Hopgood travelled on Trafford Hall from Alexandria to Plymouth.

[7] The probate shows that his address was 3 Park House, Park Lane, Croydon.

The Class of 1904 part 2…

Nora Cundell

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]

Nora Cundell, An old Navajo who came to trade, (see note 4).

Nora Cundell, Marble Canyon, Arizona, oil on board, Museum of North Arizona, Flagstaff.

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]

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.

[2] Nora Cundell Obituary, Montreal Gazette, 11 September 1948.

[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.

A Brief Introduction to the Blackheath School of Art

Blackheath Art School: An Introduction and depictions of the local area

I am hopeful that this will be the beginning of an exploration of the history of the Blackheath School of Art through regular blogs focusing on artists and personalities connected with the school. Thanks must go to Sydney Thornbury who has encouraged my endless fascination with the 'lost history' and John Bartram of the Blackheath Society who expertly edited my research into a more easily understandable text. Anyway, here goes...

Two of the best known artists who attended the Blackheath Art School (now a part of the Conservatoire) as students did so before it closed for World War I and World War II. John Skeaping studied under Frederic Halnon in 1914 (at the age of thirteen) for one term before enrolling at Goldsmith’s. In his career he became one of the foremost equine artists in Britain, producing sculpture for the Getty family, and is perhaps best known for his “How to Draw Animals” books. Those who have closely followed the career of Barbara Hepworth may recall him as her first husband.

One of the last students at the school was Joan Eardley, who attended for two terms in late 1938 before enrolling at Goldsmith’s in 1939. She subsequently attended Glasgow School of Art and became one of the most admired Scottish modern artists through her touching paintings of Glaswegian children and depictions of the coastline at Catterline, Aberdeenshire.

The 1904 Blackheath School of Art students’ exhibition was reviewed in the Arts and Crafts Magazine which provides a fantastic resource of names for researchers. In the review a young student Percy Noel Boxer, whose watercolour 'capital' work was included amongst the praise for this medium at the school: ‘In water-colour painting… excellent studies were shown, evidencing a degree of practical appreciation of the capabilities of the medium not often met with in school work.’  His drawings of Charlton and Greenwich featured in the Studio Magazine in 1916 and he is renowned for his drawing of Limehouse and of Greenwich and its surrounds. Tragically, he died young after a long illness and today little is known about him, although his works definitely deserve another look.

Another student who featured in this exhibition was Nora Cundell who received the following mention about her exhibited work: ‘In spirited conception, at least, Miss Norah Cundell is not far behind Miss Stanton, in her Nursery Panel of a Children's Cake-Walk’. Cundell subsequently studied under Walter Sickert and in her later years travelled to Arizona to spend time in the desert painting cowboys and the Native American Indians. Her 1940 tome, Unsentimental Journey, describes one of her many trailblazing adventures and is full of simple yet descriptive line drawings of the characters she encountered there.

Blanche Goff also receive a mention for her metalwork describing Blanche’s ‘beaten silver work and enamel jewellery [as] deserv[ing] commendation’. Her sister Bertha Goff, who attended Holloway School of Art, continued with this career and her arts and crafts style jewellery is sought after today. One of the two sisters later became a teacher at the school as a B Goff is listed as a teacher of Enamelling in 1909.

One of the local artists who attended the school was privileged to study under some of the foremost British printmakers of the day. This was Meryl Watts who is perhaps best known for her striking depictions of Portmeirion which were made into postcards. Living in nearby Saint Germain’s Place, some of her early woodcuts show Blackheath as it looked in the 1930s. Watts also features in the records of the Music school, having attended from 1919 to the late 1920s, participating in physical education classes and piano lessons. Currently she is the first student we have evidence of attending both schools.

Blackheath, 1930’s by Meryl Watts

A plethora of new names have come to light from documents in the London Metropolitan Archives and the National Archives, Kew. Some have particular claims to fame, including Phillip Boydell who taught ceramics and design at the school in the 1920s and designed the typeface for the Festival of Britain (Festival Titling) in 1951 and various iconic advertising images. Harold Nelson was a renowned bookplate artist who taught Black and White Illustration, according to the 1909 prospectus. He also designed a stamp for the 1929 postal union conference and worked for Punch magazine. A well-known local artist Hugh Bellingham Smith taught the ‘Study of the Figure’ (Life Drawing/ Painting) in 1909 and he painted numerous landscapes and works that survive depicting nearby Greenwich Park.

Children in Greenwich Park, sold at Bonham’s 2010, by Hugh Bellingham Smith

Placing existing works into the context of the Art School has been one of the most exciting parts of this research. The first discovered extant piece of ceramics, and also the earliest piece from the school, is on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The vase, created by Frances A Baker, was made in 1901. 

John Edgar Platt and Charles Paine, two esteemed printmakers, worked together at the school in the 1930s and both men produced advertising posters for London Transport. A work by Platt, The Lamb, appeared at auction at Bamford’s in the summer of 2015 and is inscribed ‘From JP to CP, 1934.’ It is, along with the vase in the V&A, one of a few artworks that are documented as having been completed at the school.

Michael Platt, the son of the principal, John Edgar Platt, studied at the school in the 1930s, later becoming a painter and teacher of art. One of his paintings depicted Blackheath during the war portraying how the Heath appeared in World War II looking towards Shooter’s Hill in the background.

Barrage Balloons and Tank Traps, Blackheath by Michael Platt, 1940 sold at Cheffins 2011

In the past the art school has been associated with Eric Gill as he was a guest lecturer in 1939. This is slightly unfair as other eminent artists and art historians including Muirhead Bone, Francis Dodd, Barnett Freedman and James Laver either delivered lectures or gave out awards at prize-giving events here.

There is a wealth of material surviving in the archives of the Conservatoire relating to its music school but very little original material that belongs to the art school before its 1940 closure. Neil Rhind’s research provided a starting point along with some interesting letters from Margaret T Holden Jones, Douglas Percy Bliss and Norman Sillman which provided names to look into.

The pride of the archive is the 1931 prospectus with names of teachers and a beautiful frontispiece which looks as though it may have been designed by James Woodford, but what happened to the art school’s original documents from this period remains a mystery. Various possibilities have been suggested, for example that John Edgar Platt, the principal at the time of the 1940 closure, was not interested in keeping paperwork, that the material was destroyed when David Moir Carnegie’s house was destroyed by bombs or that it was left on a bus. Spencer Jones, the Chairman of the school’s board of governors at its closure, had the final word, writing in a letter to Mr Houghton of the London County Council on 22 June 1959 that all the material, including minute books and accounts were destroyed when Moir Carnegie’s house was bombed.

These names are just a fraction of the people who either studied or taught at Blackheath, Greenwich, Lee and Lewisham School of Art before its closure in 1940. Hopefully more names will come to light to further enhance its reputation as a respected and renowned school. The Conservatoire waiting room has on display works by a number of the artists mentioned here, so please feel free to come and have a look.