In 2015 the Victoria and Albert Museum published a book on the Artists of Great Bardfield. Here is my review of the work which was published in the September 2016 issue of the Burlington Magazine.
Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield. Edited by Gill Saunders and Malcolm Yorke. 208pp. incl. 150 col. + 49 b. & w. Ills, (V. & A. Publishing, London, 2015), £25. ISBN 978–1–85177–852–2. Reviewed by SILAS CLIFFORD-SMITH
One of the highlights of the exhibitions in 2015 was the Eric Ravilious retrospective at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Best known for his distinctive watercolour images of ports, barren hillsides and vernacular rural buildings, Ravilious reinvigorated a somewhat unfashionable technique in the 1930s and early 1940s with his more modernist approach to the medium. Reflecting the greatly increased interest in him, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in association with the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, has published an illustrated survey of the artists associated with the mid-twentieth-century art community of Great Bardfield in northwest Essex, which of course included Ravilious and his fellow Royal College of Art friend Edward Bawden. In truth, Ravilious only spent a short time in Great Bardfield, during the early 1930s, but this volume includes many of his Bardfield-era images.
Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield. Edited by Gill Saunders and Malcolm Yorke. 208pp. incl. 150 col. + 49 b. & w. Ills, (V. & A. Publishing, London, 2015), £25. ISBN 978–1–85177–852–2. Reviewed by SILAS CLIFFORD-SMITH
One of the highlights of the exhibitions in 2015 was the Eric Ravilious retrospective at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Best known for his distinctive watercolour images of ports, barren hillsides and vernacular rural buildings, Ravilious reinvigorated a somewhat unfashionable technique in the 1930s and early 1940s with his more modernist approach to the medium. Reflecting the greatly increased interest in him, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in association with the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, has published an illustrated survey of the artists associated with the mid-twentieth-century art community of Great Bardfield in northwest Essex, which of course included Ravilious and his fellow Royal College of Art friend Edward Bawden. In truth, Ravilious only spent a short time in Great Bardfield, during the early 1930s, but this volume includes many of his Bardfield-era images.
The art community at Great Bardfield was active during the middle decades of the last century, and garnered national fame after the War when the dozen or so resident artists held a series of public exhibitions in their homes and studios. These intermittent ‘open house’ summer festivals reached a peak during the mid- to late 1950s, when thousands of visitors made the trek to the isolated rural village. As the son of two resident artists who were involved with the Great Bardfield community during its peak, the present reviewer looked forward to this publication and to the new light it would shed not only on Ravilious and Bawden, but also on their fellow artists in the village.
The life and work of fellow Royal Academicians Michael Rothenstein, Edward Bawden and John Aldridge, as well as the textile designer Marianne Straub, are now familiar to many readers, but information on the artists involved with this community is still sparse. Chloë Cheese’s essay on her parents Bernard Cheese and Sheila Robinson is enlightening, as are the chapters by Gill Saunders on Kenneth Rowntree and Michael Rothenstein. However, it was disappointing to find virtually nothing on George Chapman and Audrey Cruddas, or on this writer’s parents, Stanley Clifford-Smith, Secretary of the Great Bardfield Artists’ Association, and Joan Glass. This diminishes the book’s scholarly worth. The present writer’s recently published biography, Under Moonlight: A Portrait of Great Bardfield Artists Stanley Clifford-Smith and Joan Glass, addresses some of these omissions (self published, ISBN 978–0–646–94221–6, 2016).
Since the 1950s the Great Bardfield art community has been difficult to define stylistically. The book’s co-editor Michael Yorke gives his attention chiefly to those artists trained by or associated with the Royal College of Art, namely Bawden, Ravilious, Rowntree, Walter Hoyle, Cheese and Robinson, describing Great Bardfield in his introduction as ‘almost an outpost of the RCA’. Yorke’s concentration on these artists downplays the diversity within the group. The tempered modernism of Bawden’s circle was important to the lasting reputation of the community, but the contribution made by other artists and designers resident in the village certainly added to its richness and variety.
Many guest artists exhibited with the Great Bardfield circle, both in the village and elsewhere, among them sculptors Eduardo Paolozzi and Geoffrey Clarke, painters Denis Wirth-Miller and Charles Howard, illustrator Laurence Scarfe, as well as the celebrated cartoonist David Low, who had a cottage in the village. All helped expand and develop audiences for the Bardfield exhibitions, but the significance of these guest artists to the success of the community is not properly investigated in the volume.
These criticisms aside, the lasting joy of this book is the opportunity it gives to view many works made by this diverse group of artists. Tirzah Garwood’s marbled papers make delightful endpapers and it is a pleasure to rediscover Sheila Robinson’s hand-printed relief prints. Many images featured will be familiar, but the editors should be congratulated on sourcing much previously unpublished work in national and regional museums as well as private collections. This book is not the last word on the subject, but it will introduce Great Bardfield and its creative community to a wider audience.
The life and work of fellow Royal Academicians Michael Rothenstein, Edward Bawden and John Aldridge, as well as the textile designer Marianne Straub, are now familiar to many readers, but information on the artists involved with this community is still sparse. Chloë Cheese’s essay on her parents Bernard Cheese and Sheila Robinson is enlightening, as are the chapters by Gill Saunders on Kenneth Rowntree and Michael Rothenstein. However, it was disappointing to find virtually nothing on George Chapman and Audrey Cruddas, or on this writer’s parents, Stanley Clifford-Smith, Secretary of the Great Bardfield Artists’ Association, and Joan Glass. This diminishes the book’s scholarly worth. The present writer’s recently published biography, Under Moonlight: A Portrait of Great Bardfield Artists Stanley Clifford-Smith and Joan Glass, addresses some of these omissions (self published, ISBN 978–0–646–94221–6, 2016).
Since the 1950s the Great Bardfield art community has been difficult to define stylistically. The book’s co-editor Michael Yorke gives his attention chiefly to those artists trained by or associated with the Royal College of Art, namely Bawden, Ravilious, Rowntree, Walter Hoyle, Cheese and Robinson, describing Great Bardfield in his introduction as ‘almost an outpost of the RCA’. Yorke’s concentration on these artists downplays the diversity within the group. The tempered modernism of Bawden’s circle was important to the lasting reputation of the community, but the contribution made by other artists and designers resident in the village certainly added to its richness and variety.
Many guest artists exhibited with the Great Bardfield circle, both in the village and elsewhere, among them sculptors Eduardo Paolozzi and Geoffrey Clarke, painters Denis Wirth-Miller and Charles Howard, illustrator Laurence Scarfe, as well as the celebrated cartoonist David Low, who had a cottage in the village. All helped expand and develop audiences for the Bardfield exhibitions, but the significance of these guest artists to the success of the community is not properly investigated in the volume.
These criticisms aside, the lasting joy of this book is the opportunity it gives to view many works made by this diverse group of artists. Tirzah Garwood’s marbled papers make delightful endpapers and it is a pleasure to rediscover Sheila Robinson’s hand-printed relief prints. Many images featured will be familiar, but the editors should be congratulated on sourcing much previously unpublished work in national and regional museums as well as private collections. This book is not the last word on the subject, but it will introduce Great Bardfield and its creative community to a wider audience.