The Intimate World of Harold Gilman

Vuillard, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Hammershøi: The British painter Harold Gilman seems to have to sucked up a whole range of continental European artistic influences and, in the second decade of the 20th century, distilled them into a series of intimate, often enigmatic, colour-filled pictures.

He died in 1919, aged 43, in the Spanish flu epidemic that swept away millions around the world at the tail end of World War I. An appropriate anniversary, then, for an exhibition about Gilman at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, the first such show for 35 years. It's called Harold Gilman: Beyond Camden Town, because it focuses on the final decade of the artist's career, when he moved on from the rather more formal post-Impressionism of the Camden Town Group around the often very murky Walter Sickert. He continued to depict everyday subjects and apply his paint thickly but became, well, just a little bit more daring and experimental.

At the start of this show there's a brownish self-portrait, but Gilman's paintings often feature quite a light palette, one that's somewhat at odds with an at times slightly claustrophobic viewpoint. Here, in The Shopping List, we're looking through a door into a scullery where a servant is bent over the dresser. She's cropped by the door frame, with a fair chunk on the right of the picture taken up by a rather garish green wallpaper. It's a teasing glimpse, and it seems to be more about composition than any real narrative.

Another interior, An Eating House, sees the diners largely hidden behind high-backed wooden benches, only visible because of their hats and coats. Gilman puts the emphasis on the textures and colours of the walls and furnishings in this everyday scene. It's quite an Impressionistic work, though perhaps not so much as his picture of The Swing Bridge, Dieppe, in which the light comes through the metalwork on top of the bridge in dappled splodges of white paint, illuminating the scarcely defined yet brightly coloured pedestrians walking underneath.

Gilman followed Sickert in painting a series of nudes, though his approach comes across as rather less voyeuristic, a bit more observational, as in this Nude on a Bed with its variety of forms and textures.

Gilman also paid homage to Whistler's Mother, painting his own Interior with Artist's Mother. There's more colour than Whistler, a lot more to look at in the background, and there's that thick paint again, rather than Whistler's smoothness.

Gilman did head outside sometimes, with interesting results. The Lane is an almost Fauvist view of a tree-enclosed road with a house behind, while Orchard incorporates flat areas of colour and sharply angular forms. A London Street Scene in Snow has a forlorn, depopulated feel to it. The reproductions don't do justice to the brightness of these works.

But the artist appears to have been happiest indoors, in the confines of his flat in Maple Street off London's Tottenham Court Road. Interior with Mrs Mounter offers us a view from the main room with Gilman's landlady seen through the doorway. She seems almost incidental in this work, just another detail among the furnishings, fixtures and fittings in a painting in which the eye is most taken by that astonishing blue patterned wallpaper.

And the same wallpaper features again, in a picture from the opposite viewpoint called Tea in the Bedsitter. The atmosphere appears tense, with the two figures not interacting and an empty Van Gogh chair.

There's a second, more narrowly focused version of this painting alongside, with a third participant (sitting on a round-backed chair, not Van Gogh's), and the meal seems even more strained. There is a narrative here, but it's by no means clear what it is.

The intimacy of a mother nursing her child is caught in Interior, from late 1917 or early 1918, depicting the artist's second wife, Sylvia, and their new son, John, just about visible. The blob of the baby's head is haloed by the golden frame of the chair.

We very much enjoyed getting to know Gilman, in a show with paintings drawn from a large variety of lenders, including quite a few from private collections. Well worth seeing.

Also at the Pallant

Running alongside the Gilman exhibition is one showcasing recent work by contemporary British artist Nick Goss. Goss's mix of painting and screenprint combines images of his everyday surroundings in south London with other themes, including memories of the 1953 flooding in the Netherlands passed on by his grandmother and inspired by a book she gave him.

Our favourite picture from this show was Commute, which looks down at the floor of the sort of train that Goss travels on daily. It's a wonderful depiction of the shoes and legs of those aboard, ranged down the side of the carriage. But can you spot the dog that Goss says drew his attention in the first place?

Practicalities

Both Harold Gilman: Beyond Camden Town and the Nick Goss show are on at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until June 9. The gallery is open 1000 to 1700 Tuesdays to Saturdays (late until 2000 on Thursdays) and 1100 to 1700 on Sundays. Admission costs a standard £12.50, or a bargain £6.50 all day on Tuesdays and after 1700 on Thursdays. 

The gallery is less than 10 minutes' walk from Chichester station, to which there's a train every half an hour from London Victoria on weekdays. The journey takes about 90 minutes.

Images

Harold Gilman, The Shopping List, c. 1912, British Council
Harold Gilman, Nude on a Bed, c. 1914, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. © Fitzwilliam Museum
Harold Gilman, Interior with Artist's Mother, 1917-18, Manchester Art Gallery
Harold Gilman, Interior with Mrs Mounter, 1916-17, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Harold Gilman, Tea in the Bedsitter, 1916, Kirklees Collection: Huddersfield Art Gallery
Harold Gilman, Interior, 1917, British Council
Nick Goss, Commute, 2018, Private Collection. © The Artist