In an English Urban Garden

April, and the weather is slowly getting warmer. The delights of the garden beckon. Perfect, then, for an exhibition such as Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden at the Garden Museum in London. We found quite a lot to like, much of it from artists we didn't know. Though strangely, a lot of the paintings that made the biggest impression didn't seem to have a massive amount to do with gardens, or gardening. 

The premise of this show is to look at how British artists in the period between the two World Wars depicted private and public spaces, but those places seem to be pretty loosely defined. There's also quite a bit of work from the 1940s and 50s. The exhibition area at the Garden Museum isn't that big, but they've crammed a lot in, and if you really take a shine to a picture, it may still be for sale, as this show is put on together with the dealers Liss Llewellyn. 

One of the largest and most strikingly attractive paintings hangs right opposite the entrance door, and it's a vision of abundance in an Autumn garden by Charles Mahoney, painted in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. 

The artist's wife Dorothy sits on a bed of cabbage leaves, cradling a basket of fruit. She almost looks like a Madonna or perhaps Frida Kahlo, and there's a slightly surreal aspect to the work, with the sculptural shapes of the trees enveloping the red brick house behind.

Quite a lot of the works in the display are urban landscapes, such as this view of Brunswick Square in Bloomsbury, by John Moody, who painted it from the first-floor window of his house not long before it suffered bomb damage in the Blitz.  

The square was developed around a formal garden at the end of the 19th century, but the trees seem to play only a peripheral role in this depiction. 

Trees and architecture come to the fore in this view of a house on Downshire Hill in Hampstead by Gilbert Spencer, younger and far less famous brother of Stanley. 

Hilda Carline, Stanley's future wife, lived on the same street, and the brothers and fellow artists Mark Gertler and John Nash were frequent visitors, dining in the garden on summer evenings. Mrs Carline's gardening was "of a highly individual kind", Gilbert Spencer later recalled. "She sowed seeds as though she were feeding the birds." 

We weren't at all familiar with Gilbert Spencer's work. A couple of his several paintings in this exhibition, such as The Flower Show, display some affinities with Stanley's style, but this one, Trees at Garsington, is another very precisely observed landscape.

Can you have a garden indoors? In a conservatory, certainly, but in Charles Burleigh's world, it looks as if you could just bring your pot plants in to your dining room in Hove. 

There's an easel nudging its way into the left of the frame, and some sherry and bananas on the table. So it's a still life of what's going to be a still life. 

There are some well-known names here: Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood, Frank Brangwyn, and Ithell Colquhoun. But it was the little-known that appealed to us, and in one case, an obscure artist who painted something that we were not too unfamiliar with. 

Queensland Avenue in Merton Park in south-west London was home to Harry Bush and his wife for more than 40 years from 1914, and Bush regularly depicted the suburban back gardens he could see from his studio. This picture was shown at the Royal Academy in 1940. We used to live in Brisbane Avenue, just round the corner. Small world....

Practicalities

Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden is on at the Garden Museum in London until June 4. Opening hours are 1000 to 1700 daily. Full-price entry to the museum, including a climb up the medieval tower for a view across the Thames to Westminster, is £14 (which, we have to say, is not the best-value art experience in London). Give yourself about 40 minutes for this show. The Garden Museum is located right next to Lambeth Palace, 10 minutes walk from either Waterloo or Vauxhall rail and Tube stations.

Images

Charles Mahoney (1903-1968), Autumn, 1951, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn
John Moody (1906-1993), Brunswick Square, c. 1940
Gilbert Spencer (1892-1979), The Balcony, 6 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, c. 1928, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn
Gilbert Spencer, Trees at Garsington, c. 1925, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn
Charles Burleigh (1869-1956), 7 Wilbury Crescent, Hove, undated
Harry Bush (1883-1957), The Artist's House at 19 Queensland Avenue, London, c. 1940