Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Wilhelmina Barns-Graham A Scottish artist in St Ives A Scottish artist St Ives in The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Wilhelmina Barns-Graham A Scottish artist in St Ives The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust 1 W. Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives Lynne Green Published by The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust, in association with the 2012 exhibition W. Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives curated by Lynne Green at The Fleming Collection, London and the City Art Centre, Edinburgh All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise, without first seeking the permission of the copyright owners and the publishers. W. Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives © 2012 Trustees of The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Text © 2012 Lynne Green All works by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham © 2012 Trustees of The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Photography: Bruce Pert except Plates Scorpio Series No.1, The Blue Studio, Warm Up, Cool Down, Red Playing Games I, Autumn Series No.5 Balmungo and Warbeth I by Coline Russelle Designed by Flit and Briony Anderson flitlondon.co.uk | [email protected] Typeset in Plantin and Grotesque MT Printed by Empress Litho ISBN: 978-0-9571050-0-3 The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Balmungo House Balmungo St Andrews Fife KY16 8LW www.barns-grahamtrust.org.uk Cover image: View of St Ives, 1940 (detail), oil on canvas, 63.5x76.5cm Author Acknowledgements I should like to extend my sincere thanks to: The Trustees of The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust for their invitation to propose and select this exhibition; Geoffrey Bertram, Chairman of The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust; Selina Skipwith, Keeper of Art at The Fleming Collection; Briony Anderson of The Fleming Collection who designed and coordinated this publication and whose tireless good humour has made working with her a delight; Dr Helen E Scott, The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Manager who has supported this project in so many practical ways from its inception, but in particular for her aid in the selection of the works of art. Lynne Green October 2011 THE FLEMING COLLECTION 2 3 Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives1 Lynne Green hat I most remember of my first real encounter (by which I mean it stopped me in my tracks) with work by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham is the energy and Wvitality of her line, together with her bold command of colour. My interest, initially at least, was as an art historian engaged with British post-war modernism. Yet Barns-Graham hardly figured in that story, despite having lived and worked (when I first encountered her) for over four decades at the heart of the community of artists associated with it, in St Ives. But there was another dimension to this first encounter. I ‘recognised’ this art, was instinctively drawn to it because I both saw and felt reflections of a common cultural heritage. Barns-Graham was clearly a consummate draftswoman and colourist. I had no doubt that these and other aspects of her art belonged to, were expressive of, her native artistic traditions and experience. Later we met, and subsequently worked together over a number of years on different projects. As I grew to know the artist and her work (with the intentions and motivations that lay at its heart), I became convinced that my first response had been correct. In the catalogue essay to the Tate St Ives exhibition Wilhelmina Barns- Graham: An Enduring Image, I suggested that any one exhibition, with its inevitable focus, could only provide a partial view of an artist’s work. (This view got me into trouble with at least one senior art critic – but I still think that it is essentially true.) Having explained the raison d’être of the St Ives exhibition (the obvious one of location and shared interests with colleagues), I observed that: ‘As a fellow Scot I might have chosen differently, had the intention been to explore the root of her art in her native tradition. There seems to me no doubt of the artist’s close and continuous relationship, for example, with an approach to the application of paint and to the use of colour epitomised by the Scottish Colourists.’2 Now, some thirteen years later, in the focus of this exhibition and the consequent selection of work, this theme is explored. I am grateful to the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust for their invitation to Scorpio Series No.I, 1995, acrylic on paper, 56x76cm BGT948 select an exhibition for the Fleming Collection, London and for the City Art Centre, Edinburgh in celebration of the artist’s centenary year. An exploration of the Scottish This painting belongs to one of three extended sequences of works on paper from the latter half of the 1990s that carry the generic title, Scorpio. Diverse in connections in the artist’s work seems particularly apposite. formal rhythm and colour range, these are flamboyant, joyful paintings, where Barns-Graham stripped from her painterly language all but the vibrancy of colour and her own gestural vigour conveyed through her brush-marks. The mastery and assurance of the three Scorpio series is evident here, in the precision The title of this exhibition, stating a simple fact of origin, does not simply of judgement – in the placement of a stroke, a line, or dribble of paint – as well as in the artist’s acute colour sensibility that made her one of the great British indicate a desire to pin down what might be identified as ‘Scottish’ in inclination colourists of the late twentieth century. or national character in the artist’s work: although these will emerge if, as I believe, they are there. It is clear that where many artists, art historians and exhibition 4 5 selectors are able to identify particular preoccupations and qualities that distinguish and the Balmungo estate in particular providing rest and inspiration. Despite ‘Scottish’ art, there is a context for discussing the work of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham having made her home in Cornwall, from the first Barns-Graham regularly returned in relation to her native traditions. While once identified as ‘one of Britain’s most to Scotland, initially for short visits, later for prolonged periods. From her first senior abstract painters’ (in response to an exhibition of her work in Edinburgh), 3 submissions, of the mid nineteen thirties, to the Society of Scottish Artists and The her early close association with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo, Royal Scottish Academy open exhibitions, the pattern of her exhibiting presence in and later with figures such as Roger Hilton, has been seen in her native country as Scotland while occasionally sporadic, was a thread of connection with the north that providing ‘a historic link between Scotland and St Ives’.4 Her work has regularly was never broken.6 After her first solo exhibition in 1956 with Aitken Dott’s ‘The Island Factory St Ives (Camouflage No.2), been included in publications and exhibitions specifically concerned with Scottish Scottish Gallery’ in Edinburgh, they became her representative dealer in Scotland; 1944 - Page 26 art: wherever her physical location, she has been claimed by her country of birth as she continued to exhibit regularly with them until her death. The year before joining one of its own, while also being identified outside that country as belonging to its Aitken Dott she had been included in a ‘Contemporary Scottish Painting’ exhibition lineage. The artist herself, while always determined to retain her position within the in London, and this perception of her as retaining her national identity while working art history of St Ives and its contribution to British modernism, was proud of that as a resident in St Ives, was to continue. Scottish lineage and comfortable to be identified as belonging to it. This is, however, Taken as a whole Barns-Graham’s body of work reveals an inventive, the first exhibition to specifically address the nature and extent of Barns-Graham’s creative artist that was constantly challenging herself, restless in her desire to push Afghanistan, 2000 - Page 52 debt to her training in Edinburgh, the continuing inspirational resource she found in at her own boundaries and to find new ways of expressing her creative idea. She Scotland and its creative importance throughout her life. It has been inspired by the has been criticised for the diversity of the language she used during a career that belief that awareness of these, and of her own ‘distinctive cultural background’5 can spanned some seventy years; but to expect uniformity and repetition in an artist, is only enrich the understanding and enjoyment of the artist’s work. to misunderstand the searching, inquiring nature of art itself. The work that Barns- Graham will perhaps be most loved and admired for is that done in the latter period A life of continuities and symmetry of her life, when age eased the need for pleasing anyone other than herself, and in which she allowed herself to ‘let rip’. In the last fifteen or so years of her career (she Barns-Graham lived a long and productive life, creating an almost continuous flow was working almost to the last) there was an astonishing outpouring of energy and Geoff and Scruffy, 1956 - Page 35 of inventive, often courageous work throughout her professional career as a painter. invention in which she pared her vocabulary to the essentials of brushstroke, line and There were times when she and her art were critically neglected or dismissed as colour.