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Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Inspirational Journeys

Willhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

Barns-Graham drawing, Sant’Elia,Sicily,1955

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Inspirational Journeys Barns-Graham at Warbeth,Orkney,1985 WilhelminaBarns-Graham Inspirational Journeys

Willhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Barns-Graham, Sicilly, 1955 Foreword

As an artist, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was intensely aware of the nuanced world around her, as attentive to the smallest of details as she was to the broad sweep of her environ - ment. From a child she had an acute sensitivity to the subtleties of form and colour, and how they are revealed, modulated and changed by light and shadow. As this exhibition shows, throughout her life she was engaged by the structure (outer and inner) of the visible world and by the potential of line, pure geometric form and subtle variations in colour hue, to convey emotion and felt responses. Whatever her means, she sought to encapsulate and distill the totality of her experience.

Barns-Graham’s inventiveness and immediacy of response to new stimuli are perhaps most evident in the art that resulted from a dramatic change of scene–when she travel led both within the British Isles and abroad. These encounters with the new and the unex - pected are the focus of Inspirational Journeys. When consider ing her life’s story, it is clear that it was founded, in childhood, on a recurring pattern of movement from one place to another. It was not therefore out of character, that for most of her adult life, the artist travelled seasonally between homes and studios in St Ives, Cornwall and St Andrews in Scotland. New themes and sequences of work emerged in response to this rhythmic change of location, refective of the unique nature of each place: and so it was when she embarked on more adventurous journeys.

The exhibition demonstrates that travel provided Barns-Graham with refreshment of inspiration and renewed vigour of invention. Diferent experiences and unfamil iar sub jects were embraced as starting points from which to explore her consistent interest in the essentially abstract, formal qualities of natural and man-made form. The artist’s travels abroad began in earnest as a student and then as a young artist eager to explore countries and locations that were long-established destinations for artists–Italy and its cities among them. These early journeys were usually made with the intention to work– specifcally to draw. For this was a foundational disci pline instilled in her at Edinburgh Col - lege of Art. With the possible exception of one visit to Orkney, when she occupied a studio in Strom ness, later sojourns were plan ned as holiday retreats. Nonetheless she travelled prepared to work–art was the language with which she explored the discover ies of travel.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 355 The artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the forms and contours of the earth’s surface is evident, as is her fascination with its more intimate, internal structure–revealed by both natural and human agency, as with the clay extraction she drew at Chiusure in Tuscany. A defning moment in her creative engagement with natural interior form occurred whilst climbing the Grindelwald Glacier during a visit to the Swiss Bernese Alps, in 1949. The pale transparency of ice disclosed to her the deep inner geometries of the glacier, the trajectories of rifts and cracks, tracing its melt and refreeze, the constant movement, expansion and contraction. The works of art inspired by glacial formation were seminal to the artist’s career and reputa tion, as she embarked on an extensive series of images, in diferent media that are painterly equivalents of three-dimensional sculptural form. Arguably, the visit to Grindelwald provided Barns-Graham with a subject that is unique in the history of British twentieth-century art.

During the late 1950s the artist’s palette responded to the warm, intense and muted colours of Spain and the Balearic Islands. In Ibiza and Formentera she captured the abstract qualities of indigenous architecture and landscape. Much later in her life the uniformly angular ‘pavement’ rock formations of Stromness and Yesnaby in Orkney, initiated a prolonged series of paintings and ever more inventive collages: rifs and variations on a geological theme. Later still, several visits to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands introduced Barns-Graham to the other worldly formations and colours of a volcanic landscape. These journeys led once more to a substantial sequence of works, primarily on paper, the most dramatic perhaps being those on black paper, which echo the famous black beaches and vineyards of the island.

This touring exhibition is one in a series initiated by the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust that focuses on particular subjects and themes within the diversity of the artist’s work. In so doing they ofer the opportunity for a wider audience to explore the variety of her interests and preoccupations throughout what was a long and constantly inventive working life.

Lynne Green

365 Barns-Graham drawing, Syracuse, Sicily,1955 A new involvement in form Barns-Graham,Switzerlandand Italy

‘We are concerned too much with forming fnal opinions and too little with being sensitive about what we see and involving ourselves in it.’ 1

Inspirational journeys form a recurring thread in the history of artists’ lives and careers. They suggest the efects of getting away from one’s usual place and the positive changes this can bring, especially to future work. Travelling has enabled countless people, including artists, to escape or transcend−temporarily at least not only their homes and homelands, but also their habits or routines, social status, world views, families and friends. Travelling has also brought many closer to home, increasingly appreciative of their home lives and ‘norm’.The lines above, written by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in a diary entry recording an Italian journey during the early 1950s, show that Barns-Graham was concerned, especi ally while she was away from home, with enjoying a sense of freedom from judgements and an almost meditative openness to her senses, as well as her inner experiences of the landscapes she encountered.

It is easy to take for granted that Barns-Graham enjoyed her visits to particular places, among them Switzerland, Italy, Lanzarote, and Orkney. One can assume from this list, furthermore, that she was fascinated by the look and feel of land- scapes that spokeof the earth’s transformation over time.The terrainsof these places display their own geological shifts, due to erosion, temperature changes, quarry - ing or other means. Barns-Graham was also attracted to other kinds of struc tures within places, namely the composition of towns and architectural environ ments made as people slotted into the natural world. Her choice of subjects, whether natural or man-made, was shaped by an artistic predilection for exploring groups

385 of shapes on the verge between order and disorder. Often, patterns with the landscape’s forms or architecture seem to have arisen naturally, without mathematical formulae.

This essay focuses on Barns-Graham’s journeys to Switzerland and Italy, seen in the context of her earlier life and learnings. Her trip to Switzerland in 1949 was the most signifcant holiday for her developing artistic career. Visits to Italy between 1953 and 1955 resulted in another substantial body of work, though in many ways this also grew out of her experiences of Switzerland. This study aims to refect the inspirational signifcance of these places while retaining the complexity of their efects as they connected with Barns-Graham’s previous and future experiences both at home and elsewhere.

Barns-Graham’s journey to Switzerland in 1949 came at a particularly important time in her life and career, and it is bound up with her experiences of the previous nine years in St Ives in west Cornwall. Arriving in St Ives in March 1940, at the age of 27, the young artist from Scotland felt the instability and newness of her posi tion creating an urge in her to make something creatively with her hands. From her new home she wrote in her diary, ‘My mind just seems in an awful whirl & I don’t know how I can make anything of it. I feel almost as if I wanted to get hold of diferent textures of paints & materials of paint & place them one upon the other with my hands.’2

From St Ives she developed new strategies for depicting the world around her. She soaked in visual impressions and captured these in her notebooks, which are littered with detailed descriptions of colours, harmonies and characters. She also set to work on a list, titled ‘subjects noted in St Ives’, which she could turn to for reference and inspiration over the following years. Such planning may have been a response to the prohibition of painting outdoors in coastal commun ities during the war. This list included particular views of the town and sections of it, as well as objects, people and kinds of tree.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 395 Fig.1 Pine Tree,Carbis Bay,1943 pen and ink on paper (dimensions/location unknown)

Barns-Graham’s notes also show she was observing her surroundings with an eye for abstract qualities, especially colour, rhythm and form. After coming across ‘2 interesting decaying tin mines’ along the coast that she decided she’d like to paint, she wrote simply, ‘Stonework & shapes.’ Visiting the fshing port of Newlyn, she remembered her interest in ‘the quarry on approaching it & the interesting shapes & colours in passing’.3

In addition to the subject-matter available in her new environment, living in proximity to fellow artists in St Ives during these years encouraged Barns- Graham to experiment more with the rhythms of colour, form and line. As books by Clive Bell and Roger Fry, among others, in her library demonstrate, Barns- Graham had been interested in abstract art, including concepts of ‘signifcant form’, since the late 1920s at least.4 Yet her knowledge of art movements, in particular the continued relevance for her contemporaries of Cubism and Constructivism, was strengthened by her contact with older, more established artists. Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson had relocated to St Ives in late

3105 August 1939, seeking refuge from the Second World War for them and their young triplets within the coastal community far from London. They had been invited to stay at Carbis Bay, just outside of the town, by their friends, Margaret Mellis and Adrian Stokes. Mellis and Stokes hosted the Hepworth-Nicholson family in their house, Little Parc Owles, until the end of 1939. Russian artist Naum Gabo, encouraged by Hepworth and Nicholson, arrived in Carbis Bay soon after.

Crucially, Mellis was a friend of Barns-Graham’s from Edinburgh College of Art. Invited to stay for a few nights before others arrived, Barns-Graham also resided briefy at Little Parc Owles shortly after she arrived, where she was introduced to others in her friend’s network. Her notebook from the time contains excited descriptions abut meeting Hepworth, Nicholson and the Gabos at various gatheri ngs, including a sherry party and music evening both hosted while the writer Herbert Read was in town.5

By the middle of 1941 Barns-Graham’s travels had taken her further outside of West Cornwall, taking stock of landscapes and churches that she saw along the way. She particularly enjoyed visiting the old church at St German’s, closer to Plymouth, with its Norman archway, 13th-century stonework and font, towers, ancient stool and gothic screen, describing these details in her notes.6 She also made trips to Scotland, Norwich and London. In October 1941 she met artist Peter Lanyon for the frst time, encountering some of his paintings ‘& later construc tivist experiments in his studio’.7 The paintings Lanyon had been making since 1939 included softly painted still lifes and portraits, expressive landscapes and more brightly coloured, abstracted compositions. The ‘construc tivist experiments’ she saw probably included box constructions and freestand ing space-shaping sculptures made with mixed media, including metal rods.

Barns-Graham’s paintings from the early to mid-1940s show her confdently working in a range of representational styles. This is illustrated by a photograph of the artist with her frst solo exhibition at Downing’s bookshop in St Ives in June 1947 (Fig.4). Although this exhibition marks a turning point in Barns-Graham’s

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Fig.2 Grey Sheds, St Ives II,1947, oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm BGT 603 Fig.3 Mevagissey I,1948, pen, ink & wash on paper, 41 x 49 cm BGT 1395 Fig.4 Barns-Graham with George Downing, exhibition at Downing’s Bookshop, St Ives,1947

3125 growing professional career, her broader output over the early to mid-1940s is inconclusive as a whole, especially in comparison with later work. A strong stimulus prompting more focused and sustained enquiry might not easily have been found in the familiar environment of St Ives, where Barns-Graham had lived out the war and its aftermath. Particularly prominent in the photograph of her Downing exhibition is Grey Sheds, St Ives II, 1947 (Fig.2). A confdent choice of subject-matter painted delicately but with a surrealistic edge, it stands partly as a symbol of her need for refreshing, positive focus.

A desire to move forwards stands out among Barns-Graham’s refections to her parents from this time. On 1st June 1947 she wrote to them subtly compar ing herself with other members of The Crypt Group, a new exhibiting group in St Ives. Most of the other members (these included Lanyon, John Wells and Bryan Wynter), she described, had been given shows in London over the last two years and she had been encouraged by Nicholson, Hepworth, and the potter Bernard Leach to develop her own work. She wrote: I don’t think I’ll look back from now−I know now−to go on: Seemingly I have every reason to provided I really work in the future−& that is where Barbara thinks I’ve lacked & it’s time I know myself I’ve not been confdent inside enough−I know now that I evidently have something original to say & that I ought with work to get known.8

A drawing of Mevagissey, a fshing port 40 miles east of St Ives, made in 1948, (Fig.3) is one of few works which pre-empts, in some ways, the direction Barns- Graham would take in her Switzerland works. The harbour is seen in the centre of the page between spreading sloped roofs and felds rising on the hill behind. Varied ink lines and tonal washes emphasise the congregation of shapes and bound aries which form this immersive horizonless view. While Mevagissey village is clearly the drawing’s subject, the strength of the image lies in her delineation of forms and space, particularly her use of strong lines and washes of ink to create a rhythm that moves circularly around the bowl-like harbour.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3135 Switzerland

The stimulus for Barns-Graham’s voyage to Switzerland came unexpectedly in postwar St Ives. After developing a friendship with a family who were on a short holiday in the town, Barns-Graham was invited to accom pany these new friends on their upcoming vacation to Switzerland in May 1949. Even after arriving, she explained that the trip was for leisure. On 23rd May, after relat ing an exciting visit to a waterfall in Lauterbrunnen, she refected, ‘I don’t alas see any thing I want to draw−I know Switzerland is grand, beautiful & excit ing but as an artist to me anyway it has no appeal−France yes. However this is a grand spot for a holiday . . . ’9 The landscape reminded her of her own country: ‘Here it is neat, clean, like a huge Scotland−the highlands on a grand scale− a very grand scale . . .’ 10

Just over a week later, Barns-Graham wrote again about a visit to glaciers at Grindel - wald, where, after a one and a quarter hour climb up a mountainside, she had done some drawing. The trip had not been a comfortable one and her descrip - tions stress the oddnessof the experience rather than its beauty–‘It was very strange up there’.11 She did not have long in the spot as the light was failing and the roar of a distant avalanche gave her a fright. Despite this, she drew sections and levels of the glacier on large sheets of paper (‘half imperial size’, 55 x 38 cm). Along with her deeply held memories, these drawings fuelled a sub stan tial series based on the glacier landscape.

Barns-Graham later refected on the value of drawing to her experience of new places. Interviewed in 1994, she stated succinctly, ‘I draw to have the experience of discovering new shapes and being in tune with nature’.12 Spending time with the landscape and drawing in it, she became particularly involved in the com plex- ity of its forms, especially the revealing of internal spaces within external forms, the presence of rocks both enormous and small, as well as its varied surfaces, whether softly melting, hard rock or sheer ice. Her later memories of the glaciers are full of descriptions of these contrasts and changes on the mountainside.

3145 Over ffteen years later, she particularly remembered the land scape’s ‘massive strength and size’, ‘fantastic shapes’, ‘the contrast of solidity and transparency’ and that pieces of rubble rested inside or around ‘enormous standing forms’. She described how sunlight had caused transparencies, holes and new shapes, and with this came the sound of change: ‘a sharp crack and its echoes’. Constant changes in response to the air and elements meant that the landscape ‘seemed to Breathe!’.13

Barns-Graham depicted the glaciers’ forms in ways that suggest the immersive efect of being close to them. She wrote that she had wanted ‘to combine in a work all angles at once, from above, through and all round, as a bird fies, a total experience.’ 14 This she achieved in her drawings from the spot, which depict the glaciers up close and with little, if any, sky. Perspectives may have been merged to create the sense that glaciers surround the vantage point and are penetrable. Views such as End of the Glacier Upper Grindelwald, 1949 (Fig.25) therefore recreate Barns-Graham’s physical involvement with the place rather than simply her view.

Barns-Graham’s experience of glaciers and her feeling for how to represent them coincided with a marked interest Cubism. Her desire to combine view points suggest how this had an impact. In 1948 she acquired a book from Downing’s bookshop (the location of her exhibition the previous year) in St Ives: a new English translation of a monograph by critic Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler on the life and work of Cubist painter Juan Gris.15 This still exists in Barns-Graham’s library where it holds her bookmark at page78. On this page the author descri bed Cubism in its ‘analytical’ phase as an attempt to recreate the complete experi ence of things by ofering multiple viewpoints. He wrote, ‘By not limiting them selves to the reproduction of a single visual impression of an object, they [Cubists artists] hoped to express it more fully’.16 Although we do not know precisely how Barns-Graham combined viewpoints of the glaciers, it is most crucial to recognise that she, having read about Cubism and while experiencing this location, developed an entirely new kind of landscape image.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3155 5 6

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Fig.5 Barbara Hepworth, Pelagos, 1946 elm and strings on oak base, 43 x 46 x 38.5 cm Tate © Bowness

Fig.6 Glacier (Red and Blue),1951, oil on canvas, 75 x 62 cm Wolverhampton Art Gallery (image courtesy WAG/Art UK)

Fig.7 Ice Cavern,1951, oil on canvas, 60 x 99 cm London Borough of Camden (image courtesy Art UK)

Fig.8 Suspended Ice,1951, oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm Private Collection (image courtesy Sotheby’s)

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3165 Sensing that she was doing important work with the help of glacier motifs and memories, Barns-Graham continued to work on this series after she returned to St Ives. She experimented with the efects that diferent media could bring, making drawings, watercolours, etchings, ofset drawings and over 30 fnished oil paint ings. The resulting works have often been described in terms of their formal relationship with Constructivism, an art movement originating in 1920s Russia and represented in St Ives by Gabo. This analysis ofers impor tant context for Barns-Graham’s interest in glaciers as structures which contain space as well as other forms. By extension, the relationship between Barns-Graham’s glacier works and the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth from the early to mid-1940s deserves further exploration as to how both artists were adapting Constructive impulses to their own ends at this time. Hepworth, whom Barns-Graham greatly admired, had, in works such as Pelagos (Fig.5) applied Gabo’s vision of Construc - tivism to express the sensation of landscape in sculpture, a more explicitly tangible medium.

The mention of Constructivism in relation to the glacier paintings has arguably overshadowed discussions of how these paintings operate physically in relation to the viewer’s space. In the back of her book on Gris, Barns-Graham wrote the following notes: ‘bringing the painting outwards into reality a) destruction of inner space b) reverse section framing, for framing “causes sensations of three dimensions. It gives an illusion of depth”’. Although her glacier paintings create a sense of depth within their structures (i.e., through the translucency of paint, the structure of forms) the forms of the glaciers are complex and encompassing so that they completely dominate the space of her images. They are rarely framed by much, if any, scene-setting space, and the resulting images do not, therefore, create an illusory space or traditional landscape ‘view’. In other words, Barns- Graham’s glaciers do not act as scenic objects within an image-world, rather they become it, fully aligned with the space of the image (Figs.7 & 8).

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3175 10

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FIG.9 Clif Face,1952, oil on canvas, 102.8 x 92.7 cm BGT385

FIG.10 Clif,1952, oil on hardboard, 25.5 x 35.7 cm BGT9658

FIG.11 Landscape in Blue and Brown,1952 oil on canvas, 60.2 x 76 cm BGT1251

FIG.12 Cornish Landscape (Porthleven Evening),1951 oil on canvas, 61 x 167 cm St Ives Library (image courtesy Art UK)

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3185 Italy

Barns-Graham’s life and career underwent some signifcant changes between her return from Switzerland in 1949 and her visits to Italy in the early 1950s. Within the six months that followed her return to St Ives, a second solo exhibition of recent works was held at Downing’s bookshop and she married. Her work of the following years operates in a few slightly diferent modes, depending on the subject matter. Many of her representations of the Cornish landscape from this time resemble her approach to the glacier series, on which she contin ued to work. This is especially visible in paintings on similarly sheer subjects from the early 1950s, including Clif Face and Clif, both 1952 (Figs.9 & 10). In some other works from this time large rock forms dominate her canvases (Fig.11). Their encom pass - ing masses have huge presence while the multiple layers of trans lucent paint refect back the nature of the work’s surface as part of a painted image.

When appropriate to the subject, Barns-Graham used alternative modes. Cornish Landscape (Porthleven Evening), 1951, for instance, ofers a more tradi - tional view of a place. The enclosing shape of the land dominates the compo - sition, but no single element of the place takes over the view. Instead the wide vista looks over a ledge of roofs to a sweeping view of the harbour foor, with the sea and a rising hill behind and a cloudy sky. Probably made with the need of readability to a wide audience in mind, it was submitted to a local arts festival in St Ives in June that year, winning her the painting prize. Barns-Graham partic - ularly noted its Italianate colour, having recently purchased a book on the 15th- century Italian painter Piero della Francesca. She wrote to her parents that June, ‘I’ve sent in a long landscape [. . .] Its [sic] like an early Italian painting in colour. Browns & blue greys (Fig.12).’ 17

Between 1953 and 1955 Barns-Graham made three visits to Italy with her husband David Lewis. Characteristic of her notes and refections on these trips was her desire to get to know places through exploration and connecting with their art and buildings. In June 1954 she wrote to her aunts from Florence that

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3195 13

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FIG.13 Clay Workings, Chiusure,1954, oil on canvas, 60.2 x 76 cm BGT 752 FIG.14 Red Canyon Palinuro Campagna,1955, pencil, tempera and gouache on paper, 43.9 x 63 cm BGT 153

3205 she was ‘trying to get a “feeling” of Florence & its people, monasteries, hills’.18 She was thinking particularly of Giotto, Cimabue, Masaccio ‘& a few others . . .’ and soaking up the sounds, colours and shapes of the places she visited. She described lovely details: ‘pale ochre walls, red tiled passages & numerous white marble slabs in foors & sides of walls’.19 In the countryside she was especially drawn to the landscape around Chiusure, which has deep narrow ravines and steep slopes of sculptural white clay. She drew on the spot and afterwards from sketches and memories. Like her drawings and paintings of the glaciers, the struc - ture of large deep segments of the land are the focus of her Chiusure composi - tions (Fig.13). Bowl-like forms cut into the landscape to reveal deep internal struc - tures within. Like Suspended Ice,1951, or Clif Face,1952, (Figs. 8 & 9) marks are not always recognisable as particular parts of the land but together they provide a feel ing for the chasmic space and the formal rhythms of the site.

In 1955 Barns-Graham made a longer journey around Italy with the help of a travel scholarship from the British Council. She returned to Chiusure and visited Milan, Rome, Campania, Umbria and Sicily, among other places, over the course of about six months. Some drawings she made in Palinuro, in Campania, are reminiscent of her approach to her Chiusure drawings and glacier scenes. The drawing Red Canyon, Palinuro, Campagna, 1955, (Fig.14) presents forms of the cavernous landscape very close to the picture plane so that it conjures the sheer ness of its forms. This picture also epitomises Barns-Graham’s use of colour in drawings at this time. Clay red colours the landscape and adds a darker tone to the central middle distance, suggesting the canyon’s depth and the dry heat of summer.

In the mid-1950s Barns-Graham’s interest in architecture appears to have been particularly reawakened. Throughout her life she kept two important architec tural surveys, P. Leslie Waterhouse’s The Story of Architecture: Throughout the Ages (1924; inscribed by Barns-Graham 1927) and W. R. Lethaby’s Architecture: An Introduction to the History and Theory of the Art of Building (1912; inscribed 1934), indicating early interest.20 Then, many years after purchasing these, she and Lewis had the

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3215 13 16

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Fig.15 Church in Assisi,1955 Fig.16 Coliseum interior, Rome,1955 Fig.17 Temple, Agrigento, Sicily,1955 Fig.18 Temple ruins, Sicily,1955

3225 opportunity to explore historic architecture in Italy. At the time Lewis’ interest in buildings was undoubtedly strong; he enrolled at Leeds School of Architecture the following year, supported fnancially in part by his wife. Photographs taken by the couple from their Italian journeys form a signif icant group in the artist’s photograph collection.21 Among them are a group of prints titled ‘Churches in Assisi etc’ (Fig.15), a view from of the Coliseum interior in Rome (Fig.16), and a group of landscapes and townscapes taken in Sicily. The latter group includes pictures of temples at Agrigento, and views of buildings within the landscapes of Taormina and Palermo (Figs 16 & 17).

The relationship between Barns-Graham’s drawing and relief-making practices in the mid-1950s deserves more focus than can be given here. She had been developing relief compositions since at least 1954 and used the technique to respond to experiences of Italy. Formed by cutting and scraping small pieces of hardboard with a razor blade, she made some monotone ‘white reliefs’ and others including a few other colours, some using light natural tones and others with Mondrianesque primaries. Although these reliefs are geometric and abstract, their compositions also recreate in three dimensions the sensation of architectural scenes. Though not explicitly representing buildings, their angled rectilinear surfaces, which are often kept white, resemble walls receding into the distance. Not only recreating the spatial interaction of planes, they also strongly suggest a place’s mood, temperature, season, and sounds (Figs 19 & 20). As the glaciers had been brought to life by sounds, ‘a sharp crack and its echoes’, so for Barns- Graham architecture she encountered, whether in Italy or Cornwall, was enliv - ened by interaction with their surroundings. The following lines are characteristic descrip tions from an Italian notebook: ‘For cloisters perfect symmetry and whiteness perfect space and tranquillity suddenly a breeze clatters among pale leaves, and then all is silent again. The breeze was a movement of v. warm air.’22

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Fig.19 White Relief Horizontal No. 2,1955, oil on hardboard, 11.5 x 19.6cm BGT 1210 Fig.20 Sicily Relief,1955, oil on board, 22.8 x 22.9 cm BGT 258 DPrivate CollectionI

3245 Proximity and distance

Barns-Graham’s journey to Switzerland in 1949 set her on a path that, in many ways, sustained her practice after she returned to Cornwall and as she made subsequent journeys to Italy and elsewhere. Her mid-1950s reliefs look very diferent from her glacier series, but in both she used forms innovatively to describe and process these places as well as her physical involvement in them. Always this required both proximity and distance. Greater distance from natural - istic details and direct observation meant tapping instead into powerful sensa - tions, memories and recordings. The resulting works are intimate refec tions on the power of forms and journeys to take their hold.

Rachel Rose Smith

Notes 1. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Italian diary [early 1950s], University of St Andrews Special Collections [SASC] 132/5/8. 2. Undated note in Wilhelmina Barns-Graham St Ives diary [Spring 1940], SASC 132/4/1/4. 3. Ibid. 4. Barns-Graham’s library contains the following by Bell and Fry: Clive Bell,Art, 1929, inscribed by Barns-Graham 1929; Roger Fry, Vision and Design, 1934, inscribed by Barns-Graham 1934. 5. Ibid. The sherry party was held on Easter Monday, 1940. 6. Ibid. [Summer, 1941]. 7. Ibid. Note dated ‘Weds 22’ [October, 1941]. Lanyon was on leave from the RAF and in St Ives from 16–25 October 1941. 8. Barns-Graham, letter to Allan and Wilhelmina Menzies Barns-Graham, 1 June 1947, SASC. 9. Barns-Graham, letter to Allan and Wilhelmina Menzies Barns-Graham, Monday 23 May 1949, SASC. 10. Ibid. 11. Barns-Graham, letter to Allan and Wilhelmina Menzies Barns-Graham (or aunts?), Tuesday, 31 May 1949, SASC. 12. Barns-Graham in National Life Stories, ‘Artists’ Lives’, interview by Tamsyn Woollcombe, June, 1994. British Library C466/34, No.2. 13. Barns-Graham, letter to Tate Gallery,1965, Tate Gallery Archive. Quoted in Lynne Green, W. Barns-Graham: a studio life, 2001, p.107. 14. Ibid. Author’s italics. 15. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His Life and Work, trans. Douglas Cooper [1947], inscribed ‘1 Porthmeor Studios, 1948’ and containing sticker of Downing’s bookshop, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Library, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. 16. Ibid, p.78. 17. Barns-Graham, letter to Allan and Wilhelmina Menzies Barns-Graham, 18 June 1951, SASC. 18. Barns-Graham, letter to Mary Neish and Betty [?], 10 June [1954], SASC 132/1/2/42. 19. Ibid. 20. Barns-Graham Library, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. 21. Barns-Graham Photographs Collection, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. 22. Barns-Graham,Italian diary [early 1950s], SASC 132/5/8.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3255 FIG.21 Barns-Graham with Mrs Brotherton and sons, Switzerland,1949 FIG.22 Barns-Graham with the Brotherton familyon Grindelwald Glacier,1949

3265 Glaciers

During 1948, a Mr Brotherton, then Deputy Education could disintegrate and fall of, breaking the silence Ofcer for Devon, was recuperating from an illness with a sharp crack and its echoes. It seemed to breathe! in St Ives. A meeting with Barns-Graham led to a studio Enormous standing forms, polished like glass with visit, discussions about her art, and a new friendship. sharp edge, which could include buried in it and on it, An invitation followed to accompany him, his wife and two huge and tiny stones and rubble. This likeness to glass young sons on a visit to Switzerland the following May. and transparency combines with solid rough ridges made me wish to combine in a work all angles at once, Barns-Graham had been able to undertake some work- from above, through and all round, as a bird fies, focused travelling while studying at Edinburgh College a total experience.’ of Art, particularly in 1937 after receiving the Andrew Grant Vacation Scholarship immediately following the She was able to make a few pencil and watercolour award of her Diploma. This allowed her to visit the Inter - studies while she was in Switzerland; on 29th May she national Exhibition in Paris and the south of France in wrote to her Aunt Mary, ‘I’ve done one or two drawings– the company of her friend, fellow artist, Margaret Mellis. I spent one day by myself–I went up a glacier about However, by 1949 she had been living in St Ives for the 1¼ hrs climb + drew there takings sandwiches with me.’ best part of a decade, through the difcult wartime However, it was in the studio on her return where over period, and Switzer land represented a very welcome three years she was able to transform the experience opportunity for a change of scene and most importantly into an incred ibly sustained and inventive body of work, fresh visual inspiration. which encom passed drawing, etching, ofset drawing, and over 30 fnished oil paintings. Her exploration The group stayed near the impressive glaciers at Grindel - of interior and exterior forms within these Glacier works, wald and it was her enthralled experience of this ice feld refected similar concerns to those of Naum Gabo, the that would have such a profound impact on her artistic constructivist sculptor with whom Barns-Graham was practice. In 1965 she wrote: well acquainted during her frst years in St Ives. At that ‘. . . the massive strength and size of the glaciers, the time, he was making translucent sculptures using clear fantastic shapes, the contrast of solidity and trans - plexiglass, defning internal and external form and space parency, the many refected colours in strong light, without depicting mass, her Glacier paintings refect the warmth of the sun melting and changing the forms, similar concerns but within the two dimensional space in a few days a thinness could become a hole . . . a piece of the painter’s canvas.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3275 23

24

3285 25

FIG.23 Glacier Study with Guide Cuting Steps Grindelwald, 1949, ofset drawing and wash on paper, 28.6 x 40.1 cm BGT 6010 FIG.24 Glacier Study, 1949, ofset drawing and wash on paper, 29 x 40.2 cm BGT 6009 FIG.25 End of the Glacier Upper Grindelwald, 1949, gouache and pencil on paper, 40 x 59 cm BGT 6399

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3295 FIG.26 Upper Glacier Teme, 1950, ofset drawing on paper, 22.9 x 34.3 cm BGT 6003

3305 FIG.27 Study for Large Shelf I [Glacier], 1951, ofset drawing and wash on paper, 48 x 62.7 cm BGT 7072

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3315 Fig.28 Penwith Arts Ball poster, January1956 background image by Barns-Graham

Fig.29 Barns-Graham at Agrigento, Sicily, 1955

Fig.30 April 7 Templi Hercules, 1955 pencil and wash on paper 47 x 58.5 cm BGT 1673

3325 Italian landscapes

Critic J.P. Hodin’s very positive review of Barns-Graham’s On 9th July 1954 Lewis wrote to Willie’s Aunt Mary from exhibition of Glacier works at the Redfern Gallery in 1952 Chiusure, ‘The chasms so deep and sheer are staring ivory did, however, conclude : ‘There must be sunny days in her and silver in this brittle white sunlight . . . Willie has done life and turbulent states, and a change of motif, environ - in Italy several very big and fne and tender draw ings: ment and influence might liberate in her what is still some [of] them are quite the best drawings she has ever dormant’. Four years later, in July 1956, the Scottish done I think’ (Fig. 33). Gallery held her frst solo show in Edinburgh. Billed as An exhibition of drawings from Sicily, Italy and south-west During the 1954 visit Barns-Graham successfully applied Cornwall, of the 38 works included, all but four were from via the British Council for an Italian Government spon - the several months she spent touring Italy in 1955 and sored International Scholarship. Worth about £25 per this substantial group represented only a fraction of the month, it would allow her in 1955 to spend nearly six series of related drawings she made during three visits months visiting Milan, Rome, Tuscany, Campania, Umbria, to Italy between 1953–55. and particularly Sicily. On this occasion, the preceding Paris visit included attending Nicholson’s exhibition Barns-Graham made all three Italian trips in the company at the Museé Nationale d’Art Moderne and meeting of her then husband David Lewis, and each followed artists Poliakof and Brancusi. a similar pattern of frst visiting Paris en route, a routine established in 1953 when they met, amongst others, The extended visit in 1955 allowed Barns-Graham sculptors Giacometti, Arp, and Pevsner. They spent much to create a large group of related drawings, many with of June and July 1953 in Italy, particularly around San a distinctive colour wash in watercolour, gouache Gimignano, a small walled medieval hill town in Tuscany. or tempera (Monte Olivetti, Tuscany,Fig.31). They bring She also visited Chiusure, further south in the province together the keen observation of the phenomenal world of Siena, where on subsequent trips she would make from her training at Edinburgh College of Art with her large numbers of drawings of the characteristic moon- interest in the structures of landscape, geology, and like gullies caused by erosion of the clay soil. architecture. While always representing specifc places, in the Italian drawings Barns-Graham places particular Preceding the 1954 visit to Tuscany was a trip to Paris emphasis on the underlying abstract properties of accompanied by Roger Hilton, which included a visit what she sees, linking these works to both her earlier to Maria Vieira da Silva’s studio. They also visited the Glacier and Rock Form paintings and the abstractions Venice Biennale for Ben Nicholson’s British Pavilion that would follow in the late 1950s. retrospective and met with Peggy Guggenheim.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3335 FIG.31 Monte Oliveti, Tuscany, 1953–54, pencil and tempera on paper, 34.5 x 43.2 cm BGT 1083

3345 FIG.32 Clay Working, Chiusure, 1954, ofset drawing and tempera on paper, 40.1 x 51.8 cm BGT 6154

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3355 FIG.33 Evening, July, 1954, pencil and tempera on paper, 42.5 x 54.2 cm BGT 6180

3365 FIG.34 Chiusure May, 1955, pencil and tempera on paper, 38 x 56 cm BGT 6221

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3375 Fig.35 Private View card for the Barns-Graham Recent gouaches and Spanish drawings exhibition, at the Scotish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2–16 July, 1960 Fig.36 Page from the exhibition catalogue, listing the Spanish (Balearic) works

3385 Ibiza & Formentera and Spanish Paintings

In 1958 the sculptor Roger Leigh, then assistant In 1960 Barns-Graham held her second solo exhibition, to Barbara Hepworth and a Penwith Society of Arts Recent Gouaches and Spanish Drawings, at The Scottish member, organised a visit for some fellow artists Gallery in Edinburgh. The Spanish Drawings amounted to Spain. The group, including Barns-Graham, toured to 25 Ibiza and Formentera studies (Fig.36), while the the galleries of Barcelona and sites of the surrounding 45 gouaches were all made between 1958–60 following area, after which she continued alone to explore Ibiza her Spanish journey. While only fve of these specifcally and the small neighbouring island of Formentera. reference Spain in the title, including Sandscape (Tarra - gona) (Fig.42), she was working on a much larger group On the islands, she continued the way of working of works specifcally linked to her experience of Spain established in Italy, making drawings and seeking through their titles, including a number of Spanish Coasts out subjects that would allow her to explore and and the extensive Spanish Island Series. emphasise the abstract properties she observed. In Ibiza and Formen tera, this set up sharp contrasts Though stylistically quite varied, these Spanish works that in many ways refect her changing concerns over share a number of attributes–they are relatively abstract the following decades; in Ibiza she focused on the compared to, for example, the earlier Glacier and Rock architecture of the Old Town–white, cuboid buildings Form series; they share a palette of earthy browns, ochres, that she could render with a simplifed, almost geometric reds and oranges which are distinctly Spanish and the accuracy which predict her use of wholly abstract hard- paint application is broader and looser than before, with edge forms in the later 1960s Dalts Vila (Night) Ibiza the visible individual brushstrokes which would rarely (Fig.37). Meanwhile, in Formentera she was attracted be seen again in her work until the 1990s. Alan Bowness’ to the jagged clif and rock forms encountered on the introduction for the catalogue for the 1960 exhibition coast which she drew in black ink in a very immedi - could equally apply to Barns-Graham’s late-work: ‘This ate,vigorous and expressive manner, such as Rocks, is not the kind of painting that is a denial of life, a retreat Formen tera 1958 (Fig.38), which would have some into a private unintelligible world: with its bold shapes impact on the ‘Spanish Paintings’ which would emerge and bright colours and exhilarating rhythms it is rather following her return to St Ives and her studio. an afrmation of vigour, joy and beauty of the world.’

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3395 FIG.37 Dalts Vila (Night) Ibiza, 1958, pen, ink and wash on paper, 41 x 52 cm BGT 9788

3405 FIG.38 Rocks, Formentera, 1958, pen, ink and wash on paper, 42.5 x 54.5 cm BGT 751

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3415 FIG.39 Spanish Coast 3 [Spanish Island Series], 1958–59, oil on canvas, 67 x 84.5 cm BGT 6406

3425 FIG.40 Spanish Island Series (Under and Over), 1960, gouache on paper, 57.9 x 90.5 cm BGT 555

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3435 FIG.41 Spanish Coast, 1958–59, gouache on paper, 42 x 53.5 cm BGT 2077

3445 FIG.42 Sandscape (Tarragona), 1960, gouache on paper, 58.2 x 91 cm BGT 3237

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3455 FIG.43 Variation on a Teme (Suspended Ice), 1987, oil on canvas board, 18 x 25.4 cm BGT 1274 FIG.44 Untitled (Glacier), 1994, oil on canvas, 61 x 61 cm BGT 411

3465 Return to the glacier

Barns-Graham’s seminal visit to the Grindelwald Glacier ours to render the Glacier experience afresh, with in 1949 and the group of works she made over the follow - a slightly diferent stylistic approach, such as in Glacier ing few years had a dramatic impact on her profes sional Snout Pink (Fig.46) or the even more stylised Glacier Knot career. The Arts Council and British Council collec tions (Fig.47), which is from the extended group of ink and both acquired Glacier works and there was a solo exhibi - wash drawings she made between 1975–95. tion at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1952, which would also lead to their representation in numer ous Illustrated opposite are two later works that also look private collections. Barns-Graham would not receive back to the Glacier experience, at diferent moments this degree of commercial success and critical attention in her later career. Variation on a Theme (Suspended Ice) again until the late 1990s when she began exhibiting (Fig.43) comes from a wider group of works originally her celebrated late ‘Scorpio’ works. inspired by the observation of cracking ice over frozen puddles, but which led to Barns-Graham also applying Although she never physically returned to Switzerland, this initial spark to a ‘Glacier’ focused image. The later at certain moments during her career, and particularly Untitled (Glacier) (Fig.44) is probably the fnal fnished between 1978–1994, Barns-Graham would revisit this Glacier painting. Although the painted surface is quite inspirational journey to create a range of new work. diferent, with its distinctive ice faces and hole, it harks The largest group came in the late 1970s and perhaps back more to the original 1950s paintings than any began with a revisiting and working over of studies from of the Glacier works made in the intervening years; the time of the original visit, adding revitalising washes testimony to the power of that inspirational journey and details. This led to new works in which she endeav - made 45 years earlier.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3475 FIG.45 Glacier Study, 1978, gouache on paper, 57 x 76 cm BGT 510 FIG.46 Glacier Snout Pink, 1978, gouache on paper, 56.8 x 76.5 cm BGT 6393

3485 FIG.47 Glacier Knot, 1978, pen, ink and mixed media on paper, 27.2 x 20 cm BGT 76

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3495 Fig.48 Barns-Graham, Orkney, c.1984–85 (Photo: Rowan James) Fig.49 View from Barns-Graham’s accommodation at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness,1984

3505 Orkney

The exhibition W. Barns-Graham. Paintings and Drawings diary: ‘So much work ideas are here–drawings colour, opened in August 1984 at the Pier Arts Centre in Strom - shapes, moods, space–elongated shapes–& then the ness, Orkney. Focusing on work made over the preceding light & rock groupings–water movements–changes– decade, it had previously been shown at the Crawford it is over whelming–choked with it all.’ Centre, St Andrews, supported by the Scottish Art Council. After spending a couple of days before the private view The island made a deep impression on her and in overseeing the hanging of the show and travelling September 1985, Willie decided to return for another around the island, Barns-Graham notes in her diary: fve week working visit. This time staying at Stenigar, ‘. . . getting excited by landscape and drawing possibilities which had once belonged to Stanley Cursiter (artist and at Finstown’ (which is halfway between the main towns a Keeper of the National Galleries of Scotland), she was of Kirkwall and Stromness). again enchanted by the island, noting in her diary: ‘When the sun & light is out it is all miraculous’. Although regularly making landscape drawings Particularly taken with the distinctive slabbed rock in Cornwall and St Andrews, this was the frst time forms of the beach at Warbeth near Stromness and since her visit to Spain and the Balearics in 1958 that similar formations at Birsay, she took numerous photo - she would make a new, focused body of work, including graphs, later incorporating the colours and forms into drawings, paintings and reliefs, inspired by a specifc a series of shallow painted reliefs (Figs 50–52). location. Following the opening of her exhibition, where she was delighted to meet such Orcadian cultural For the frst time in 25 years Barns-Graham was making luminaries as writer George Mackay Brown, who she work, other than drawings, inspired directly by specifc greatly admired and flmmaker Margaret Tait, Willie places. Fairly traditional landscapes made either while decided to stay on for a while when she was ofered on Orkney or in the studio sometime later, such as a room within the arts centre where she could live and Two Island Series (No. 2) (Orkney) (Fig.54), led to looser, work (Fig.49). more adventurous paintings such as Brown, Green and Ochre with White Line (Orkney) (Fig.55). Similarly to some She stayed for 38 days, happily engaging with the local of the work she would produce from Lanzarote, this work community whom she found very welcoming. Though indi cates a direction away from the hard-edge, geometric often plagued by indiferent weather on what she notes abstraction of the preceding decades to the looser more as the 32nd day, 21st September 1984, she writes in her expressive work of her fnal years.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3515 FIG.50 Warbeth 2, 1985, acrylic on paper on hardboard, 53 x 17.9 cm BGT 777 FIG.51 Warbeth I, 1985, acrylic on card on hardboard, 78.1 x 25.4 cm BGT 754

3525 FIG.52 Birsay II, 1986, acrylic on hardboard, 35.5 x 106 cm BGT 1182 FIG.53 Warbeth 6 (Orkney), 1985, acrylic on card, 27.5 x 27.5 cm BGT 197

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3535 FIG.54 Two Island Series (2) (Orkney), 1987, oil and pencil on hardboard, 29.8 x 60.8 cm BGT 1007

3545 FIG.55 Brown, Green and Ochre with White Line (Orkney), 1988, acrylic on paper, 57.5 x 76.1 cm BGT 705

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3555 Fig.56 Barns-Graham drawing, La Geria, Lanzarote, c.1989–90 Fig.57 Barns-Graham drawing, Lanzarote, c.1989–90

3565 Lanzarote

For fve consecutive years 1989–93, Barns-Graham close by San Bartolomé. There she saw ‘excellent visited Lanzarote amongst the Canary Islands, staying examples of molten lava, merging + spiral shapes’. for three to four weeks at a time, usually around She ‘. . . got to the congealed lava by Manrique house February–March. Although the frst visit may well have . . . very complicated rhythms. . . had a struggle with this been intended primarily as a holiday, these became very detailed subject. . . trying to get weight and rhythm’. much working trips and led to a large, varied and distinc - tive body of work. That she made fve trips in as many In much of La Geria the lava is still raw and sharp, as yet years indicates strongly that she found the very partic - unafected by erosion. It is not easy to walk amongst it, ular landscape inspiring, with the added beneft of the which is why she often draws from the roadside. In these climate being good for her health. images, the smooth conical shapes of the volcanoes are set of against the chaotic patterning of the lava. Dominated by a landscape formed by a history of volcanic Most were done with pencil though there are a series activity, Lanzarote’s dramatic interior captivated Barns- of colour crayon drawings and gouaches that refect Graham’s imagination and proved a rich source of the ‘amazing strata bands of grey, red, darkish brown and type of geological subject matter of she found partic u - some . . . of blue grey’. larly stimulating. She marvelled at the black rock forma - tions and strange conic hills (Fig.56). One of the main As with Orkney, Barns-Graham utilised an impressive roads wends its way up the centre of the island, curving range of media and approaches in creating a large body through the La Geria region, she noted: ‘. . . magnifcent. of Lanzarote-related work, including pencil studies, paint - Plenty of subjects + v. difcult’, (La Geria, Lanzarote No.3, ings on paper in acrylic and gouache and white chalk on Fig.58). On her third trip she wrote: ‘. . . we set of for black paper made both in the landscape and back home La Geria where I meant to look out some felds always in her studio. Lanzarote (Fig.63) even includes volcanic inspired me for abstract but light was wrong + began dust embedded in the surface of the paint. This painting pencil drawing on white paper of hill + some volcanic along with works like Ozola Lanzarote (Fig.62) demon - shelf shapes foreground’. strate how remarkably she was able to transform direct experience of place into almost purely abstract images, Barns-Graham’s later trip to Lanzarote in 1992 was while retaining something of the essential character ‘confned to lava movement + mostly from one place’, of the landscape that inspired them.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3575 FIG.58 La Geria, Lanzarote 3, 1989, acrylic on paper, 56.5 x 76 cm BGT 1178

3585 FIG.59 Volcanic Island (Near Montana del Fuego II), 1989, gouache and chalk on paper, 56 x 75.5 cm BGT 6223

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3595 FIG.60 [Lanzarote Series],1992, pencil on paper, 29.2 x 40 cm BGT 6138

3605 FIG.61 Lava Forms Lanzarote 2, 1993, chalk on black paper, 28.8 x 41.6 cm BGT 1098

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3615 FIG.62 Ozola Lanzarote, 1991, gouache on paper, 56.3 x 75.3 cm BGT 538

3625 FIG.63 Lanzarote, 1992, acrylic and volcanic dust on paper, 57 x 76.5 cm BGT 985

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3635 Fig.64 Barns-Graham in Parc Güell, Barcelona, October 1991

Fig.65 Postcard of Miró’s 22-metre high Woman and Bird sculpture in the Parc Joan Miró, Barcelona, sent by Barns-Graham to Rowan James, 19 October 1991

3645 Late Spanish inspiration, Barcelona

In October 1991 Barns-Graham travelled to Barcelona show an afnity with Miro’s distinctive use of fuid black for a week-long visit, probably for the frst time since the paint in some of his graphic work. However, later in 1992 late 1950s. Intent on renewing her fascination with three and into 1993 she developed a specifc Barcelona Series, of the leading fgures of 20th century Spanish art, she the main initial inspiration for which seems to have noted in her diary: ‘This trip a clear 6 days with Claudine been watching the opening ceremony of the Barcelona as company, mission being to study at 3 museums– Olympics on television in July 1992, and particularly Tapies Foundation, Miro Foundation, Picasso Museum.’ the celebratory fre-themed pageant and spectacular In postcards written to Rowan James on consecutive frework display. days, 18–19 October (Fig.65), she mentions having a sand wich lunch and studying ‘like we did at the Burrell’. Works such as Barcelona, Celebration of Fire No. 3 (Fig.66) In her diary she writes of the Tapies Foundation: ‘I’m very appear at once aim to capture her impression of this impressed + stimulated + will make a second visit’. extraordinary event, while also celebrating the vitality of Despite the comparatively high cost of ‘food, catalogues, the city and particularly its artists whom she so admired, clothes’ compared with Lanzarote, she reports being Miró and Tapies. While they certainly go beyond mere ‘Very glad I came’. stylistic homage, these Barcelona pieces contain perhaps the closest overt references to other artists’ work from Though clearly inspired by the art she had seen and across her entire career. The vivid colours, loose gestural the city itself, this visit does not seem to have led to an paintwork and degree of abstraction can all be seen as immediate group of related pictures, though a small important precursors of her celebrated late Scorpio series, number of works on paper emerge during 1992 that which would soon follow.

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3655 3665 FIG.66 Barcelona, Celebration of Fire 3, 1992, gouache on paper, 76 x 57 cm BGT 6405 FIG.67 Barcelona Series, c.1992, acrylic and oil on canvas, 121.2 x 167.2 cm BGT 1309

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3675 FIG.68 Barcelona Series 2, 1992, gouache on paper, 57.5 x 76 cm BGT 1030

3685 FIG.69 Barcelona Series 1, 1992, gouache on paper, 56.6 x 76 cm BGT 993

wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 3695 Glacier photograph from Barns-Graham’s personal collection

AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Rob Airey would like to thank: Geofrey Bertram, Alison Bevan, Sophie Bowness, Lynne Green, Ross Irving Nathalie Levi, James Lowther, Aidan McNeill, Jo Meacock, Andrew Parkinson, Maia Sheridan, Rachel Rose Smith, Strule Steele, and Stephen Whitle Rachel Rose Smith would like to thank: Staf at the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust and Special Collections, University of St Andrews Library

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Inspirational Journeys First published 2019

Published by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, Edinburgh © Trustees of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmited in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise imitated without the prior writen permission of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

All works by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham©2019 Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Text ©2019 Rob Airey (section introductions); Lynne Green (foreword); Rachel Rose Smith (essay)

First published in connection with the 2019–2021 touring exhibition Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Inspirational Journeys at Te Granary Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed Royal West of England Academy, Bristol Te Atkinson, Southport Pier Arts Centre, Stromness

ISBN 978-1-5272-4584-6 Photography Art Andy Phillipson (unless stated otherwise) Archive Most archive photographs are ‘unknown’, Italy 1950s WBG photograps were likely taken by David Lewis; others from this period may have been taken by either of them Switzerland WBG in Switzerland are courtesy of the Brotherton family Design Strule Steele Print Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, Dorchester ihliaBrsGaa Inspirational JourneysWilhelmina Barns-Graham Willhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

Willhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Birsay II (detail), 1986, acrylic on hardboard, 35.5 x 106 cm, BGT 1182

Barns-Graham, Lanzarote, c.1992–93