Lucy's Awfully Big Art Adventure

Do you sometimes find it's not so much the art itself as the stories behind it that make for a really enjoyable exhibition?

It's certainly the case at Towner Eastbourne in A Life in Art: Lucy Wertheim, Patron, Collector, Gallerist and Reuniting the Twenties Group: From Barbara Hepworth to Victor Pasmore; these two linked shows take us well beyond the paintings and sculpture to uncover fascinating personal histories and to shine a light on the mid 20th-century art scene in Britain. And, unless you're an absolute expert in the art of the period, you'll discover many talented artists who are very unfamiliar names. 

Who was Lucy Wertheim? Without formal art training but with a fair amount of money, she broke into the male-dominated British art scene and was a patron to many young artists, establishing her own gallery in London in 1930. She set up the Twenties Group -- artists in their 20s, as the name suggests -- whose work she tried to exhibit round the country, with limited success. She wrote a memoir, Adventure in Art, in 1939, and continued to support artists and champion their work through the war and after. When Wertheim died just over half a century ago, she bequeathed 50 works to the Towner. 

Wertheim became interested in modern art when she was introduced to Edward Wadsworth, and it's one of his paintings that's the first you see when you come in. In her memoir, Wertheim wrote that Wadsworth, who'd been associated with the Vorticists, and his wife Fanny jolted her out of "a decidedly self-complacent outlook on art." She recalled "Fanny looking round my walls and exclaiming with a faint disdain in her voice, 'Lucy, have you never heard of Picasso?'"

Perhaps this Wadsworth doesn't quite capture that Picasso-like shock of the new, but St Tropez II, Toulon is rather a captivating painting, with the sky-blue boat in the eerily deserted harbour, glimpsed through a half-curtained window. 

Among the best known of the artists Wertheim supported and championed was Christopher Wood, whom she met just a year before he killed himself in 1930 and who charmed her. She agreed to provide him with funds to allow him to paint without having to worry about money, while the resulting paintings would be hers to sell when she opened her gallery. "Between us we could sell an awful lot and make real money," Wood wrote. 

On show in Eastbourne are joyous pictures by Wood including Dancing Sailors, Brittany, "painted with all the spontaneity and magic I had come to associate with his work," Wertheim said.  

But there are darker pictures too, including Little House by Night, with a figure in black inside the cottage and a table outside on which are placed a bottle of wine and some playing cards, representing Wood's destructive vices.  

Another painter who found sympathy from Wertheim was a German, Helmut Kolle, represented here by some remarkably sombre paintings. Kolle was weakened by a long-standing heart condition and, in apparent compensation for this, created pictures of men in strong roles such as soldiers or bullfighters. Wertheim described him as a "tragic, defenceless figure". He was not well enough to travel from France for a solo show at her gallery in spring 1931. 

Boy with Bird has a rather more empathetic feel than the other Kolle paintings on display here, which weren't well received when shown in London; The Scotsman used the headline "Frightfulness in Paint". Kolle was to die of his illness later the same year, still in his early 30s.

However, Wertheim didn't get on with every artist; there's an entertaining story about her meeting Walter Sickert on a train; she told him she owned two of his paintings and invited him to dinner. He turned up several hours late; perhaps no surprise then that she later turned down a request to sit for him. If you're wondering about the face Sickert failed to capture, here she is photographed in 1938.

Sickert was rather too well-established to be taken under Wertheim's wing, anyway; her type of artist was more along the lines of Phelan Gibb, who had moved from Britain to Paris in the late 1880s and drew inspiration from Braque, Matisse and Cézanne. 

Gibb enjoyed some success in Paris and New York, but he seems to have been constantly short of money. There are a couple of luscious landscapes by him here, but the most eye-catching picture (by no means the best) is this Three Graces. 

Gibb's nudes were controversial. A 1912 show in London was forced to close after 10 days, yet the following year more than 1000 people attended a private view in Paris. The exhibition there was such a triumph it transferred to Dublin but never opened, as the Catholic Church put pressure on the police to confiscate paintings it saw as obscene. Gibb didn't get his pictures back until 1933.  

Years later, the Irish Free State became a haven for pacifists fleeing Britain during World War II. Two of them were Basil Rákóczi and Kenneth Hall; Wertheim organised an exhibition in 1944 of their work depicting the fishing communities of the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast.  

Wertheim's London gallery closed at the outbreak of the war. In setting it up, she'd attempted to get away from the hushed atmosphere of traditional galleries by creating the ambience of a drawing room, with sofas, fireplaces and vases of flowers. 

Amid the well-to-do surroundings, however, there was some decidedly working-class painting.

George Bissill was originally a Nottinghamshire miner. There's a monumental feel to this relatively small work in which the coal-miner almost appears to be holding up the roof of the seam on his muscular shoulders.  

Bissill was one of the artists who attended the opening party for the Wertheim Gallery, and he told a reporter covering the event that he'd sold one of his pictures to the Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald.

Bissill's success prompted Wertheim to make space for primitivist paintings by other working men, such as London bus driver Henry Stockley ("though somewhat crude there was a striking quality about them"). She gave them more of a chance than Stockley's wife, anyway, who didn't approve of his art. She also supported a Great War veteran, David Burton, who worked as a pavement artist in Hampstead. Wertheim wrote to him throughout World War II, enclosing money with every letter.

There's more work by many of these painters, and by lots more, in the section of the show that brings together the Twenties Group, which staged six annual exhibitions from 1932 onwards, each featuring around 30 to 40 artists. Some are so obscure the curators have been unable to unearth any details about them, not even dates of birth or death. Others, such as Barbara Hepworth, have achieved worldwide fame. 

"Talent was surging around me on all sides demanding recognition," Wertheim wrote. But she was unable to find venues outside London for the group to tour to after 1933. The provinces weren't all that ready for Modern Art, it seems. 

Let's finish with two paintings from Twenties Group artists in this show we really liked, including The Dancers (or Composition) by George Branson. 

Search for George Branson on Google and you'll only end up with Richard, but George studied at the Royal College of Art where he met Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. We thought there was a touch of Edward Burra in the writhing limbs and off-kilter perspective of this painting. Branson died aged only 37 in 1940 after surgery for a brain tumour. 

And to close, a bit of socialist realism, English-style. 

Clifford Hooper Rowe exhibited in the first Twenties Group exhibition before going to live in the Soviet Union for 18 months. On his return, he celebrated the provision of freshly cooked cod and chips for the proletariat. 

Harry's clearly serves up a fine meal. The Towner, yet again, has served up a fine exhibition, and if you fancy some fish and chips, you've not got far to go in this seaside resort. 

Practicalities

A Life in Art: Lucy Wertheim, Patron, Collector, Gallerist and Reuniting the Twenties Group: From Barbara Hepworth to Victor Pasmore run in tandem at Towner Eastbourne until September 25. The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday from 1000 to 1700, as well as on August Bank Holiday Monday. Standard tickets cost £11, or £12.50 including Gift Aid, and can be booked online here. 

The Towner is about 10 minutes walk from Eastbourne station, which you can reach from London Victoria in less than 90 minutes by a direct train every half an hour. Allow yourself a good 2 1/2 hours to take in the two exhibitions; the captions are full of anecdotes. The Towner's café with terrace overlooking the Devonshire Park tennis courts is perfect for a half-time break. 

Images

Edward Wadsworth, St Tropez II, Toulon, 1925, The Estate of Walter and Theo Wadsworth

Christopher Wood, Dancing Sailors, Brittany, 1930, Leicester Museums & Galleries

Helmut Kolle, Boy and Bird, c. 1930, Towner Eastbourne

Lafayette, Lucy Wertheim, 1938. Photo: The Lucy Wertheim Archive

Phelan Gibb, Three Graces, 1911, Towner Eastbourne
Basil Rákóczi, Inishmore Looking Towards Connemara, c. 1942, Private collection. © Basil Rákóczi. Photo: Fraser Marr. 

The Wertheim Gallery, exhibiting Modern Painters, October 1930. Photo: The Lucy Wertheim Archive

George Bissill, Coal Miner, undated, The Trustees of the National Coal Mining Museum for England

George Branson, The Dancers (or Composition), 1930, The Lucy Wertheim Estate 

Clifford Hooper Rowe, The Fried Fish Shop, 1936, Leicester Museums & Galleries. © Anna Sandra Thornberry. Reproduced courtesy of Leicester Museums & Galleries