Academic Art and the Twentieth Century
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Academic Art and the Twentieth Century The Royal Academy of Arts 1910-1951 Vassil Vesselinov Yordanov Submitted for the Degree of Master of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Art, Media and American Studies August 2019 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived therefrom must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 2 Abstract This thesis examines the art shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between 1910 and 1951. It attempts to demonstrate that this often neglected body of works was a highly prominent element of British visual culture of the time and was often seen to meet the social needs of the twentieth century. While most studies of this period concentrate on the modernist movements the Academy is equally deserving of attention: its annual Summer Exhibitions were the most popular shows of contemporary art and were widely reviewed in the press. This study explains why academic painting and sculpture were thought to be important phenomena and how they were perceived by their makers, the critics and gallery- goers. Academic art is examined by considering the aesthetic concepts and artistic genres that were most prominent in the critical discourses surrounding Burlington House. The first chapter explores the functions performed by naturalism, the artistic approach that was seen to define academic culture. The second chapter treats the importance of formalism, a concept that is now usually associated with modernism but played an equally important role at the Summer Exhibitions. The third chapter shows how and why landscape and portraiture became the dominant academic genres of the first half of the twentieth century and also explains the decline of narrative painting. The fourth chapter demonstrates that modernist art itself often engaged with the Academy, either by criticising it or by claiming it could perform some of its traditional functions. Academic art was still impossible to ignore in this period and this thesis attempts to show what scholars can learn from its continuing importance. 3 Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter I. Naturalism ........................................................................................................... 29 Art for the ‘ordinary visitor’ .............................................................................................. 32 Modest Gentlemen ........................................................................................................... 37 The National Tradition ...................................................................................................... 50 ‘Performing a social service’ ............................................................................................. 55 Nostalgia and Conservatism .............................................................................................. 60 ‘Socialist ideology… is realist’ ............................................................................................ 70 Wars and Commemoration ............................................................................................... 73 ‘Records of our time’ ........................................................................................................ 93 ‘The subject first’ .............................................................................................................. 96 Questioning Naturalism ................................................................................................... 98 Chapter II. Formalism ......................................................................................................... 108 ‘The poetry of form and colour’ ...................................................................................... 111 The Middle of the Road.................................................................................................. 126 ‘That feeling for beauty’ ................................................................................................. 139 Chapter III. Landscapes, Portraits and the Persistence of Narrative .................................... 145 ‘England of the field and hedgerow’ .............................................................................. 150 ‘A likeness to the mind’ .................................................................................................. 157 A Story Well Told .......................................................................................................... 164 Chapter IV. Modernist Responses to Academic Art ............................................................. 171 Modernism and Tradition .............................................................................................. 172 Modernism and the Academic Genres ........................................................................... 175 Modernism and the Great War ...................................................................................... 182 Modernism and the National Character ......................................................................... 184 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................... 188 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 197 4 Introduction In 1913 the painter Henry Herbert La Thangue submitted his work Violets for Perfume to the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The picture was presented as his Diploma piece, a donation to the institution’s collection which all new elected members were expected to make.1 At first glance, the image appears a rather anodyne representation of country life. It depicts a couple of peasant women gathering freshly picked violets in a sun-drenched Mediterranean orchard. Clearly reflecting the influence of Jean-François Millet and Jules Bastien-Lepage, the painting seems to invite the viewer to contemplate the imagined simple joys of rural labour in the balmy climes of Southern Europe. It could be described as a visualisation of a timeless, almost Arcadian, realm that could have had little to do with the realities of contemporary life. The artwork may be interpreted as an escapist fantasy offered to an urban middle-class audience which was uninterested in the actual problems of the post-Edwardian countryside. However, a more thorough study of the canvas complicates this reading. In fact, the picture can strike the careful viewer as a surprisingly melancholic statement. The woman in the foreground wears a contemplative, almost mournful, expression as she tips her basket. The action itself, the gathering of dead flowers, could be seen as a reminder of the transitory nature of existence and indeed lifeless plants had often been used by Victorian and Edwardian painters to inspire such thoughts. The painting recalls John Everett Millais’ Autumn Leaves of 1856 in which, as in La Thangue’s image, the girls’ blank expressions and the waning sunlight of the background complements the sense of loss and regret that pervades the scene. The title of the 1913 piece is also significant: it tells us that the peasants gather the remnants of past vitality in order to produce perfume. Perhaps this narrative was meant to compare the 1 Mary Anne Stevens, The Edwardians and After: The Royal Academy 1900-1950 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1988), 116. 5 woman’s work to that of the painter: his creation can also be viewed as a distillation of bygone experiences, of once vivid moments, that may preserve their fragrance but cannot restore them to life. This interpretation of the image as a nostalgic meditation is apparently corroborated by evidence of the social circumstances in which it was produced. At the time the British public was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that life in the country’s villages was rapidly changing. Numerous people were leaving the smaller settlements in search of better employment in the cities and by 1901 the island had become the most urbanised area in the world.2 These demographic shifts reflected the rise of industrialised agriculture which made the workers’ manual skills superfluous. The approaches to rural labour and the patterns of daily life which had been established for generations were disappearing. The changes were often seen as a cause for concern: in 1911 the Scottish politician Alexander Murray wrote that the massive emigration from rural districts was ‘a drain on the nation’s manhood which all Scotsmen will regard as a mortal danger’.3 The Manchester Guardian also expressed its dismay at the fact that ‘there is not enough labour on the land’ and that many farmed areas remained untilled.4 In 1913 The Times wrote about the ‘housing problem’ of English villages, the inhabitants’ inability to afford local properties, and the ensuing disappearance of rustic life- styles.5 The poet Edward Thomas claimed that ‘the countryman is dying out’ and even suggested that ‘the zoological society’ should receive a few pairs before it was too late.6 Clearly, many observers thought that a vital component of national culture was about to be lost irredeemably. The somber mood that characterises Violets for Perfume can thus be 2