Feature: The Camden Town Centenary Exhibition at The Fine Art Society from June 15 until July 14
Published: 9 June, 2011
by JOHN EVANS
Just a week ago, a fine Portrait of an Artist with Palette by Walter Sickert sold at auction for a song (well, in art market terms).
As we know, these things go in cycles, but surely in the centenary year of the Camden Town Group of artists this may be about to change and a celebration of the works of such figures as Sickert himself, Spencer Gore, Charles Ginner, Harold Gilman, Malcolm Drummond and William Ratcliffe, at the Fine Art Society, which opens next week, will help us take stock again of this important movement that centred on Bloomsbury.
Curator Robert Upstone of the FAS has gathered together around 70 pictures to present a survey of the group’s output, many of which have come from the artists’ descendants and have not been exhibited before.
Led by Sickert, the group was at the forefront of modern art in the years up to the First World War. They held three exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 at the Carfax Gallery in St James’s. The emphasis was on a realism, taking as their subject matter the everyday lives of Londoners and the glitter and grime of the city.
This focus, sometimes dubbed mundane, was marked by the use of strong and decorative colour and inspired by the likes of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Degas.
Robert Upstone said: “The group was pretty short-lived but immensely influential and really the birth of modern art in Britain”.
And, with the School of London painters, that influence has been very long-lived, he added.
Works for sale will be accompanied by a small number of loans and there is a fully illustrated catalogue with texts by Robert Upstone and Denys Wilcox.
Artworks to be exhibited include those by a number of women, among them, Ruth Doggett, Wendela Boreel, Thérèse Lessore, Nan Hudson, Marjorie Lilly and Mary Godwin.
• The Camden Town Centenary Exhibition runs at the The Fine Art Society, 148 New Bond Street, from June 15 until July 14. www.faslondon.com