Abstract
This chapter continues to build an understanding of women students’ experiences at the Slade but shifts its focus to the period of 1910–1914 when the Slade was characterized as a “society” that was far from tranquil and harmonious, perhaps a microcosm of the greater and wider discontent evident in the capital in the pre-war years. By paying attention to the society outside of the college walls, the “gulf” and “crisis” within the walls can be more fully understood, not least via an examination of the archived U.C.L. Union Magazine. It becomes clear that the reverberations of social, political, and artistic change were felt every bit as much by female artists as by their male counterparts whose works and lives have been more extensively discussed. This chapter also examines the diversity of the Slade population numerically and quantifies the ratio of international to local students enrolled between 1900–1914. By identifying at least twenty-six countries of origin of students and by monitoring annual trends, some definable understanding can be arrived at concerning the “internationalism” that was said to pervade in the pre-war years. In a similar manner, this chapter conducts an examination of women scholarship/award recipients between 1910–1915, as well as locating and studying the prizewinning artworks themselves. A selection of the original paintings has been reproduced in this chapter to examine the impact of or resistance to Europe, and radical movements gaining momentum in London, from an aesthetic (as opposed to a numerical) point of view. By uncovering then combining these previously incoherent and somewhat piecemeal details, it is possible to demonstrate the undervalued engagement of these overlooked women artists in their school years.
It must have been an exciting period in which to be a student, exciting but rather bewildering.
—Michael Reynold (1974).
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Notes
- 1.
The second “crisis of brilliance” comes from a remark made by drawing teacher Tonks when recalling his students at the Slade between 1908 and 1914. Among many, five British artists were featured by David Boyd Haycock in the book Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War in 2009 (featuring Mark Gertler, C. R. W Nevinson, Dora Carrington, Paul Nash, and Stanley Spencer), and six were featured in the subsequent exhibition Nash, Nevinson, Spencer, Gertler, Carrington, Bomberg: A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908–1922 held at Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2013. According to Haycock’s research, their contemporaries at the school also included other talented young artists, such as Adrian Allinson, John Currie, Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot, Ben Nicholson, William Roberts, Isaac Rosenberg, and Edward Wadsworth. The first “crisis” had occurred between 1893 and 1901, coinciding with the arrival of Frederick Brown in 1893 as head of the school, and included the students Harold Gilman, Spencer Gore, Augustus John and his sister Gwen, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Ambrose McAvoy, and William Orpen.
- 2.
Concerning the critical and problematic nature of the term of “primitive” and “primitivism” within the context of art history and modernism, I have included a reference to articulate the meaning of the term and how it should be understood in different context throughout the book. In Critical Terms for Art History, Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten have contributed an entire chapter on the term “primitive” and argued that, “Within the context of modernism, “primitivism” is an act on the part of artists and writers seeking to celebrate features of the art and culture of peoples deemed “primitive” and to appropriate their supposed simplicity and authenticity to the project of transforming Western art. In Western culture, the term “primitive” has been applied with positive as well as negative valences, but when ascribed to cultures external to Europe, its connotations have been predominantly negative. Above all we should think of the concept of the primitive as the product of the historical experience of the West and more specifically as an ideological construct of colonial conquest and exploitation” (2003, p. 217). They go on the positive valence of “primitive” associates with the search for a simpler more basic way of life away from Western urban sophistication and social restrictions at the turn of the twentieth century “when Western culture itself was thought to be ‘overly civilized’ and thus in need of rejuvenation through contact with societies in an earlier stage of development.” An example of this is artist Paul Gauguin’s move from Paris to Tahiti in the South Pacific in 1891 “as a rediscovery of the uncorrupted, medieval roots of Western civilization” (2003, p. 219). They conclude that the negative/pejorative valence of the term “primitive” is predominantly ascribed to cultures external to Europe, and the term primitive is avoided or used with quotation marks. The term “primitive” has been used four times throughout this book, and the using of the term in each sentence can be articulated and explained as follows:
To explain my usage here, I turn once again to Antliff and Leighten, “Primitive” here relates to the positive valence of Western conceptions of the primitive that writers like John Ruskin valued. Ruskin saw “the transferal of populations from country to city as a sign of loss within Western culture of a preindustrial, and thus primitive, agrarian society whose communitarian values and religiosity contrasted sharply with the decadent effects of urbanism” (Antliff & Leighten, 2003, p. 219). The term “primitive treatment” articulated by Crane relates to the fascination of European artists with the simplicity and unsophisticated artistic techniques from what was then deemed “primitive” art—including tribal art from Africa, the South Pacific and Indonesia, as well as prehistoric and very early European art, and European folk art. The impacts of such work on early modern European artists were profound, such as the Picasso’s cubist works after the discovery of African tribal art around 1906. Frank Rutter’s (unfamiliar) “primitive” (simplicity) in Chap. 4 (Women Artists in the Allied Artists’ Association) denotes the inspiration the artists received from the so-called “primitive” art from the non-Western culture and civilization. When the term “primitive” is used in quotation marks, it means to avoid being deemed “uncivilized” by the Western standard.
- 3.
The student named “Rubert Lee” from Mexico has not been able to be located in the lists of the enrolled students in the University College London Calendar collections. It is possible that Lee was a part-time student who only took courses rather than being officially enrolled, so that his name was not listed in the record. It is also possible that Nash got his nationality wrong, as there was an “R. Lee” from Bombay from the List of international students enrolled at the Slade by school year, 1900–1914 (Table 3.3).
- 4.
The contentious term “decorative” during the period of question possessed both negative and positive connotations. I have extracted examples of “decorative” from the book to explain how it appears in different contexts and means different things depending on that context. “Decorative,” as used in the title of this book, has been explained in the Preface. “Decorative” in this book also relates to the government-funded Rome Scholarship in Decorative Painting, which was established in 1912 to encourage young painters in the art of decorative mural painting through a study of Italian Quattrocento painting and to compete for public mural commissions. In the critical reception of women artists in the period, “decorative” and “decoration” could also be stereotypically supposed to be a feminine trait or gift, such as W. R.’s review of Anne Estelle Rice’s painting of Springtime, Jardin du Luxemburg. The Vorticists-to-be scorned the “decorative” quality and damned it for being so closely associated with the practice and goals of Roger Fry’s Omega Workshop (established in 1913), however; the Times critics of the day also failed to appreciate the untamed energy and importance of the Cubist works (i.e., works of David Bomberg and Wyndham Lewis) in the first official London Group exhibition in 1914, rather situating them as patterns or mere decorations in the applied arts, lower strata within the hierarchy of genres. The terms “decoration” and “decorative” were also used widely and casually by the critics of the day to describe modern artworks in geometric style and abstract form. The term “decorative” here and in the rest of this book predominantly denotes artworks with subject matters removed from daily life or natural observation and given classical or primitive treatments. which relates to the fascination of early modern European artists with the simplicity and unsophisticated artistic techniques from what was then called “primitive” – including tribal art from Africa, the South Pacific and Indonesia, as well as prehistoric and very early European art, and European folk art. We could see this significant influence on the artists mentioned in this book both within and outside the school walls.
- 5.
Wyn George’s works were included in all but one of the WIAC shows between 1908 and 1921 (WIAC exhibitions were not held in 1916 or 1918 due to the war). Works by George exhibited at WIAC, 1908–1915, are as follows (compiled from the collection of WIAC exhibition catalogues (1908–1915) held at the Women’s Art Library): 1908 (128: Thomas, 129: A portrait, 130: Baby Bunting, 131: Baby, 132: Petit Pierre, 133: Grandpère); 1909 (137: Bébé, 158: Yvonne, 160: Thérèse, 161: Etudes-Trois Tétes, 162: Effet du Soleil); 1911 (213: Jan (pastel), 229: A Dutch Boy (pastel), 230: La Grandmère (pastel), 243: Louis et son petit Mouton); 1912 (81: Le Petit Ours, 135: Bambino Timido, 142: Maternita); 1913 (14: La Terrace, 31: El Nino, 137: A Fisher-boy, 206: El Gitano, 207: Annunziata); 1914 (146: La Coiffeuse, 154: Flute Player), 1915 (166: L’Enfant Sauvage, 167: Ergoya (pastel), 169: Méchant Saïd, 170: Femme Arabe (spinning) pastel,171: Le Kohl (pastel), 172: Laadj et Saïd (pastel).
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Yu, M. (2020). Women Artists at the Slade School of Fine Art in the Pre-war London, 1910–1914. In: London’s Women Artists, 1900-1914 . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5705-7_3
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