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. 

Deptford Creek - a boating lake for dummies??

Strolling across the ha'penny bridge over Deptford Creek last night I stumbled across some people in boats tending to mannequins. It was rather a bizarre sight as the creek is usually inhabited by a couple of swans and moored (possibly abandoned?) boats.

There were also some rather intriguing light fittings hanging along the pathway and even some lampshades hanging under the railway arches by the Crossfields Estate.

I believe it might be something to do with the Lift Festival but have yet to discover the answer...

For more about the festival see here

Boaters tending to mannequins.

 

 

Australia at the Royal Academy

It might be rather late given the exhibition finished in December but here goes nonetheless. My blog has been hijacked by a rather simple art lover...

 

Right from the first moment of entering Australia at the RA it is apparent that this exhibition was going to be a nostalgic trip. Shaun Gladwell’s, Approach to Mundi Mundi reflecting the vastness of the country and the distances people will travel to get around. The first thing I learnt in coming to the UK over 17 years ago is that Australia is not the centre of the universe; although many of my friends back home still struggle to believe me when I try to explain this.

One of the biggest regrets I have is never being brave enough to take the step to study Aboriginal Art as it meant committing to Anthropology and moving away from Art History; a discipline that I felt at home with. Sadly the Australia I grew up in dismissed Aborigines and their cultural heritage with suspicion, more because we did not make an effort to understand it, however I digress.

The first topographical images of Australian cities highlighted the British tradition that was first brought to the colony. Produced quite early, in the European part of the nation’s history just over 10 years after the first settlement they depict the development of the country, showing just how isolated these little snippets of old England were.

The fascination with Romanticism; and the overwhelming sublime quality of the harsh landscape comes to the fore in the works of Von Guerard especially Mount Kosciusko and Bushfire. These paintings could hold their own in the extraordinary catalogues of both Friedrich and Church respectively. This was a country that was harsh yet beautiful. The representation of the first contact with the indigenous people is something that was not always properly discussed in the tradition of Australian Art History. For all of the beautiful landscapes of John Glover which include native inhabitants, by this time Tasmania was devoid of the land’s custodians.[1] Yet in the same room there are some more naive works of art which show the Aborigines in a more sympathetic light. William Barak’s depiction of an Aboriginal tribe is quite touching in its crudeness. This is all the more interesting by his writing to Queen Victoria to enquire about the better treatment of his people, as he himself was a Native Police tracker.

Artists such as Roberts and Streeton are firm Australian favourites and are well represented. Monumental images such as Fire’s On! by Streeton show the unforgiving qualities of the Australian landscape so much show that the rugged painterly brush strokes which represent the rocks are repeated in the blue sky to create a warm yet unbreakable wall of monumentality. Despite the attempts to break down the wall with explosives their efforts are futile as can be seen by the casualty being stretchered out of the mine’s entrance. The mythology of Australia being a land of rugged outback heroes has been eulogised for many a year and Tom Roberts with paintings such as A Break Away! showing a drover hurtling through a desert landscape to catch a stray sheep is one such key image. Frederic McCubbin’s Lost represented the realities faced by the pioneering families, that the desolation and loneliness of the landscape was a frightening prospect. The futility and sadness that often attempted to suppress the strength of the white settlers was never more beautifully produced in such a sentimental way than in The Pioneer, an ode to the family. For all of these images of the outback there is also a small collection of burgeoning images of the city with the cigar box lids of the “9 x 5” exhibition including street scenes and even one of an Australian Rules football match representing the changing interest in the emerging urban landscapes of the country. Roberts showing his interest in not only the outback but also the bustle of the city in his small painting, Allegro con brio, Bourke Street. This attempt to create an Impressionism in Australia comes to the fore with Charles Conders water scenes, including the iconic Holiday at Mentone, which would not be out of place with Monet’s early beach scenes.

Placed at the behind  McCubbin’s monumental triptych was Grace Cossington-Smith’s  immense polyptych, creating an interesting dialogue between the traditional representations of the Australian outback and the early modern focus on everyday life in the cities. The iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge showing how Australia does also have a heritage of producing industrial landscapes not just ones inspired by nature. This is an area where the exhibition excelled showing works by other early leading women artists including Clarice Beckett’s Tonalist urban landscapes with trams and also the exquisite The Expulsion by Margaret Preston, replacing Adam and Eve with aborigines, native flowers (Sturt Desert Pea) and animals (a kangaroo and koala).[2] It was touching that these were next to the exquisite landscapes of Albert Namatjira, incidentally one of the few aboriginal artists we looked at in Art History classes as he worked in a recognisable style.

The interest in the Australian family was brought to the fore again through John Brack’s The Car featuring family with two children undertaking a journey within the cramped confines of their vehicle. The isolation of a man and an abandoned pram, in Jeffrey Smart’s beach scene is ambiguous in that the viewer is unable to work out whether the man is the owner of the pram and whether there is a child within. This ever modernising landscape and the people in it further highlighted by the increasing interest in the beach which I guess came with the urbanisation of the cities and the interests of the workers especially in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. Max Dupain’s photograph, Sunbaker, exposing a more modern view of Australian’s as bronzed and sporty.

The early modern painters of the cities are perhaps where my interest waned especially as I have very little knowledge or understanding of what comes after. Nevertheless the paintings of Second World War Australia are where it started to show gaps in the survey. Whilst paintings like Albert Tucker’s Bathers more than ably represented the Angry Penguins group and the interest in Surrealism it this section began to be more noticeable for its omissions. Painters like John Olsen, John Perceval, Clifton Pugh, Joy Hester, Vic O’Connor and William Dobell were noticeable absentees (and I could mention others). John Blackman’s paintings of the aboriginal bride would have been an excellent way to show that Australia’s attitude to its indigenous population did not advance much from the early settlers to the 1950’s.

Nevertheless the Nolan paintings showed the mythology of Australia’s past, a heroic way and iconic way of representing of the historical infancy of the country (granted white). Ned Kelly being an Australian figure, equal to Britain’s Robin Hood in that he was worshipped by those less fortunate. Arthur Boyd actually creating a biblical, apocalyptic vision of Australia, “Brueghelian”[3] if I may use the word I learnt from the RA’s label drawing on Pieter the Elder’s Tower of Babel for his horrible, haunting mess of the town’s inhabitants in The Mining Town (casting Aside the Money Lenders from the Temple). I am not sure why the RA added an “h” to this term; it does remain a mystery. One of perhaps the best known artists in Australian homes, Russell Drysdale’s landscapes depict the beauty and desolation of the outback.

It seems as though the exhibition was brought together with Australian galleries to display the ever changing landscape of the country. Yet there is a focus on the people within these landscapes and the lack of portraiture does tend to let the show down. It would have been fantastic if the exhibition could have been broken down into eras rather than one large survey. However we really should be thankful that the RA has been able to highlight the art of Australia and put on, what for me was a fantastic nostalgia trip reminding me that the art of my country does matter.

 

For more about the exhibition please see here

 

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[1] Glover sadly being a supporter of Governor Arthur who was a part of the clearance of the Aborigines from Tasmania.

[2] Sadly there were no examples of Preston’s native wildflower images.

[3] Not sure why the RA added an “h” to the term, it will remain a mystery to me as Pieter Bruegel the Elder was Boyd’s starting point.

 

Greenwich Retch Fireworks

I guess it's better late than never. Last Saturday evening we ventured out to watch the fireworks put on by HMS Ocean just off Greenwich. They lasted for about 10 minutes and were quite spectacular, reminding me of the firework display we saw at the San Francisco Giants ball game a couple of years ago.
Unfortunately I missed out on going onto HMS Ocean on Monday but trust that it was an exciting experience. Let's just hope that the navy and airforce equipment are not needed during the Olympics.

Thank-you to Deptford fire service

After a fire in Albury Street tonight, not far from where I live, I would like to pay tribute to the fire men & women who were very quick to put it out and make sure that there was nobody in the building. Without their quick response it may have spread and there may have been casualties...

Da Bears are in town

Finally, one of my dreams has come true. The Chicago Bears are in town, not only am I a huge fan of any team that wears a bear logo I am also a lover of the city of Chicago. Soldier Field was closed when I was there two years ago so now the Bears have come to me.
I am off to Wembley to see them play in the flesh. In the lead up I checked out my fierce friend in Trafalgar Square. I just hope they live up to my expectations.

Just as fierce as me in a bad mood

Bears about to eat London

As close as I could get to Soldier Field

Taking the Deptford biscuit - I finally got my paws on some

After searching far and wide I finally got my paws on some Deptford biscuits. This was after seeing some dopplegangers who could have easily come from the set of Pirates of the Caribbean walking down Deptford High Street. As they were carrying a basket full of the biscuits they must have been a part of the Make and Bake session at the Deptford Centre on Creekside. I looked around and they had gone just as mysteriously as they first appeared.
Well I finally made it to the Deptford Centre after watching the brilliant reds win the Merseyside Derby. Upon arrival I was offered some biscuits but unfortunately I did not make it in time to do the Make and Bake. Thankfully I was able to collect some biscuits including a beautifully packaged one depicting St Paul's Church and two others depicting Francis Drake and Elizabeth I. It is such an interesting project evoking the history of Deptford, bravo to Ashton and Mollett for getting everyone involved in this worthwhile endeavour -
http://www.bridgetteashton.co.uk/Deptfod_X.html
So much so that I might persuade my close friend to produce some Deptford inspired ceramics ahead of next year's Deptford X. Perhaps her work could be inspired by the patterned ceramic pieces I have been finding on the shores of The Thames off Watergate Street. More about this next time...