ASPECTS OF BRITISH INTERIOR DESIGN || The Fresco Revival in the Early Twentieth Century

The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present

The Fresco Revival in the Early Twentieth CenturyAuthor(s): Alan PowersSource: The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present, No. 12, ASPECTS OFBRITISH INTERIOR DESIGN (1988), pp. 38-46Published by: The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the PresentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809163 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 04:32

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 04:32:03 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=das

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809163?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Fresco Revival in the Early Twentieth Century

by Alan Powers

The largely Fresco

unresearched Revival of

aspect the early

of the 20th generally

century under-

is a largely unresearched aspect of the generally under-

valued mural painting movement of the time. While mural painting was an essential aspect of the Arts and Crafts movement, the technique of fresco gave the craft of painting particular prominence. Devotees of fresco stand second to none in the Arts and Crafts movement for passionate partisanship of their chosen medium.

It was not the first fresco revival in Britain. Enthusiasm for the 4 Great Style' had led the British artists Thomas Barker of Bath and John Zephaniah Bell of Dundee to study the technique in Italy and execute works at home in the 1820s and 1830s.1 The next attempted revival arose out of the scheme to decorate the new Palace of Westminster. Inspired by the Nazarene School in Germany, the idea had taken firm root that true fresco in the manner of the Renaissance masters would be the path to a disciplined greatness for British art, an idea strongly backed by Prince Albert. Mrs. Merrifield's translation of Cennino Cennini's II Libro dell'Arte was published in 1844 and her book The Art of Fresco Painting in 1846.

For numerous reasons, ťhe Palace of Westminster frescos were judged an artistic and technical failure, although on - both counts they have been excessively condemned. The darkening and decay of some of the frescos led to the adoption first of the water-glass medium (silicate of potash) for Daniel Maclise's panels in the Royal Gallery, and later of Thomas Gambier-Parry's 'spirit fresco' for most of the public mural commissions of the remainder of the century. Lord Leighton considered that this volatile suspension of pigments was 4 so like buon fresco in effect as to deceive anyone not conversant with the practice of painting. '2 Spirit-fresco effectively killed off further attempts at 'true fresco' or 4 buon fresco'. It required no special attention to plastering, and could even be executed on canvas in a studio, to be marouflaged to the wall, as were the panels in the courtyard of the Royal Exchange.

The main exception was G. F. Watt's end wall of Lincoln's Inn Hall, depicting Justice , the Hemicycle of the Law Givers 1852-59. This darkened ominously within ten years. Sir Edward Poynter also used fresco for the Lecture Hall of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and for a panel in St. Stephen's Church, Dul wich.4 There was justification for the belief that in spite of all efforts to secure the authentic methods, the English climate made true fresco impossible. It would have seemed the natural . medium for the pre-Raphaelites, even had they not been deterred by the results of slapdash methods with the Oxford Union paintings. Ford Madox Brown, who used spirit-fresco at Manchester Town Hall, wrote in Arts and Crafts Essays 1893, The old-fashioned Italian or buon fresco I look upon as practically given up in this country, and every other European country that has not a climate equal to Italy. If the climate of Paris will not admit of this process, how much less is our damp, foggy, changeable atmosphere likely to put up with it for many years.5

Yet it must be remembered that the Pre-Raphaelites did

not even attempt to revive egg tempera. This was left to a younger generation. It is related that Lady Christiana Herringham was copying The Death of Procris by Piero di Cosimo (now titled Mythological Subject) in the National Gallery when Ruskin commented on her use of tempera to copy what he believed to be an oil painting. She succeeded in persuading him that all the pictures in the room were in tempera, and it was under the influence of Ruskin 's newfound enthusiasm for the medium that Joseph Southall travelled to Italy to look at the 'Italian Primitives', and experimented with tempera on his return. In 1883 tempera painting became one of the defining characteristics of the late Pre-Raphaelitism of the Birmingham School. Its study involved a combina- tion of research into early texts and practical experiment. For both purposes, Cennino Cennini was indispensable, and a more practically directed edition was published (in her own translation) by Lady Herringham in 1899.7 This was the starting point for the Society of Painters in Tempera, founded in 1901.

The Fresco Revival was a direct outcome of the Tempera Revival. As Lady Herringham noted in her Cennini edition, 4 A very small attempt in fresco made me wish I could substitute it for tempera. But sulphuret- ted hydrogen is a remorseless enemy to any revival of true fresco.'8 The artist who set out to disprove this was another woman of independent character, Mary Sargant Florence (1857-1954),. the leading figure of the fresco revival, and a painter of considerable stature. Born Mary Sargant, she was the sister of the sculptor F. W. Sargant, and studied in Paris and at the Slade under Alphonse Legros. In 1888 she married Henry Smyth Florence, an American musician, who died not long afterwards. In 1899 she built a house, Lord's Wood, Marlow, for her- self and her two children.9 Her main activity as a fresco painter belongs to the years 1900-1914, and comprises three principal works.

Another brother of Mary Sargant Florence was headmaster of Oakham School, in Rutland, where the single- cell hall of the original school foundation of 1584 survives. As part of a restoration, around 1903, Mary Sargant Florence was commissioned to decorate the hall, and made it a demonstration of fresco technique, which she had been researching at least since 1900. The subject chosen for the cycle of eight panels, each approximately 10ft by 9ft, was The Story of Gareth, from Malory's La Morte ď Arthur , chosen as 4an allegory of a boy's life at school and of success through service and endeavour '(//g. 7j.10 This might have become a conventional rendering of an Arthurian subject, but the paintings are astonishingly strong and modern for their date. Like most of the techniques revived in the Arts and Crafts movement, fresco was seen by Mary Sargant Florence as a way of achieving better results than modern methods. Like the painters of the 1840s, she sought in fresco a craftsmanlike discipline for the painter, and was much more successful than they were in combining an archaic technique with a fresh artistic vision. She used transparent washes of colour, with considerable freedom of brushwork.

The same can be said of her two other fresco works, the

38



Fig. 1 Mary Sargant Florence The Story of Gareth - the Challenge c.1903 (detail)

hallway at Lord's Wood, which was presumably contemporary with Oakham, and the panels in Bourneville Junior School, a joint scheme with Mary Creighton, executed 1912-14. The Lord's Wood fresco, Les Aveugles , now destroyed (fig. 2), was based on a subject from Maeterlinck, with robed figures in a Buckinghamshire woodland setting.12 The Bourneville frescoes consist of fourteen horizontal panels on two sides of the school hall, which were shared equally between the two artists, although their work is mixed between the two sides. Mary Creighton was the daughter of the Bishop of London. She had presumably been inspired by Mary Sargant Florence's fresco revival, and went to her for technical help, with the resultant collaboration. Their styles are very similar, but the greater ability of the older artist is clearly apparent. I have not been able to discover any later frescoes by Mary Creighton McDowell, as she became, and this appears, rather surprisingly, to be the last fresco by Mary Sargant Florence. The subjects are taken from the New Testament, being scenes from the life of Christ and illustrations of the parables(/ïgs. 4 & 5). They rank highly among religious murals and other religious paintings of this period in their unforced and unsweetened assimilation of Renaissance precedent and freedom in figure composition. The colour range is lighter than at Oakham (the Bourneville frescoes have

Fig. 2 Mary Sargant Florence Les Aveugles c. 1903

been restored recently) and there is considerable skill in composition. As the Tate Gallery Catalogue states in the entry on the two watercolour studies for the series bought through the Chantry Bequest in 1932: 'As the panels were rather long, Mrs. Florence decided to divide them vertically into two or three sections by means of architectural devices. ' 1 3

Mary Sargant Florence delivered papers on fresco in 1906 and specifically on the Oakham paintings in 1924, both published in the Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators etc. She emphasized the importance of getting the wall surface right, and at Oakham panels were made with a cavity behind, composed, according to precedent, of three layers of lime plaster, the final one being the intonaco laid by the artist in sections for each day's work. The preparation of detailed cartoons is also stressed, as the key to confident and free-flowing work with the final plaster, the aim being to avoid any later alterations or correction in fresco secco : 'I calculate that, upon the whole, seven-eighths of the work may be devoted to cartoon preparation without loss of time in the long run.'14 The colours were equally carefully researched, and the two articles would certainly be valu- able for any present-day experiments in fresco. The enthusiasm for the medium is persuasive, The actual painting should be full of spontaneous pleasure, the final

Fig. 3 Mary Sargant Florence Calvary - the Descent from the Cross 1912-14

39



Fig. 4 Mary Sargant Florence Sketch for Pentecost - Calvary photo: The Tate Gallery

expression in terms of colour of the original conception, and the worker freed by all the preceding labour to enjoy the supreme delight of the colourist in exquisite grading of a single hue, by the simple handling of his brush, or the interweaving of many tints in harmonic concord and contrast.'15

Although she was obliged to use oil for the panel, won in competition in 1911, of Politics, Religion and Science in Chelsea Town Hall (1912, in situ), Mary Sargant Florence became a determined enemy of oil painting, believing that the tendencies of modern art, at

least around 1920, could be best achieved in leaner media, The revolt against the puerility of so-called aca- demic art, the tendency, perhaps unconscious, towards austerity of the primitives - promises so well -on paper. But when it comes to their transition onto canvas through the medium of oils, the struggles are too evi- dent; the quality of masterly control is lacking; there is peculiarity but not style.'16 Introducing the third volume of Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators etc. in 1935, she quoted with approval the statement of a 'Contemporary artist' that 'Fresco is the only form of painting which finds its true place as readily in the light

Fig. 5 Mary Sargant Florence Sketch for Suffer Little Children to come unto Me - Calvary photo: The Tate Gallery

40



soaring constructions of steel, concrete and glass which we erect today, as on the gigantic heavy walls of earlier architecture'.17

Joseph Southall's work in fresco can be more briefly described, the main work being the panel Corporation Street , Birmingham in March 1914 (fig. 6) at the head of the stairs in the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. Southall shared the civic idealism of Birmingham, but his painting is not the conventional allegorical representation of civic pride. It is a realistic street scene with a smartly dressed woman and her child buying a posy from a flower seller. The fresco was actu- ally painted during the winter of 1915-16 so that, as George Breeze suggests, it was looking back to the last springtime before the War as a moment when there was hope for a cultural revival in Birmingham, symbolised by the background figures of the playwright John Drinkwater and the Keeper of the Gallery, Sir Whitworth Wallis, who had smoothed Southall's path in getting the fresco accepted.

Southall is partly associated with neo-Renaissance subjects, and his Birmingham fresco is part of the familiar tendency of the time to see civic life of the immediate future in relation to renaissance city states.18 The imme-

Fig. 6 Joseph Southall Corporation Street in 1914

diate pre-war fashions inspired Southall to paint a modern subject, for, as John Drinkwater wrote 'After fifty years or more of almost incomparable dowdiness, we suddenly found women moving about in frank colours and with a real perception of line.'19 The models were Southall's women friends who were apparently quite unused to wearing these hobble skirts. The colours are brighter than those of Mary Sargant Florence. Southall continued in his ambition to decorate an entire room, and a fragment of his scheme for the Birmingham Council house was realised, including a fresco panel of Peace , in 1939.20

John D. Batten (1860-1932), another leading figure in the Society of Mural Decorators and Painters in Tempera, never executed a fresco 'in situ', his mural work being largely in mosaic, but his experiments with the technique, as reported in the Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators etc. reveal his dedication to the medium, and his interest in the technical aspects of it. He complained of the decline over many years in the understanding and use of lime in the building trade, which made conditions even more difficult for fresco painters. Lime improves if left in a pit to mature, and Batten described his experiments, leaving a pitfull from 1913 to 1922, and then taking a bucket of the cheese- like substance for a ride on the District Railway, at the end of which the vibrations had reduced it to the consis- tency of milk.21 Its particular property is to re-solidify by physical means, so that lime for plastering only needed to be 'knocked up' rather than diluted. Batten also described an 'experimental fresco class' held in 1913, attended by four Slade students and one from the Royal Academy.22 The work included some outdoor frescoes, which by 1922 had deteriorated, but the internal ones had survived well. One incidental campaign of the fresco revivalists was against atmospheric pollution, which they saw as a serious obstacle to the spread of their work.

A further obstacle was the apparent lack of interest in the art schools. Although mural painting and even tempera were extremely popular in the period 1910-1914, there were few qualified teachers of fresco, and the schools persisted in a disregard for the craftmanship of painting. The only instance that I have been able to trace of an institutional teaching of fresco was an evening class at the South-Western Polytechnic (Chelsea School of Art) where for the year 1912-13, W. Batchelor was'Teacher of wall-preparation for fresco'. This class was attended by Dora Carrington, who was then at the Slade, and John Nash, one of Carrington's suitors.23 They formed part of the tendency of the time, recorded by Mary Sargant Florence, in which 'groups of young artists banded themselves together with the object of beautifying the walls of public buildings in London and elsewhere'.24 It was evidently before attending this class that Carrington made her first experiment in fresco with Constance Lane, another Slade student. Together they executed a fresco commission for Lord Brownlow in an outbuilding, then used as a library, at Ashridge, Hertfordshire. The three panels of rural subjects survive, although the room is now used for sports. The commission doubtless originally came to Lane, as her family lived locally. Carrington described the painting in the summer of 1912 in a letter to Nash, (original spelling) 'We go up each day to Ashridge (an ancestral seat, with a most amazing Italian garden and trees) to do our frescoe. I am drawing the big cartoon hard. 6ft by 5ft. It is a job. But so exciting. I spend the mornings in the fields drawing big heavy elms for it and small village boys

41



Fig. 7 Dora Carrington Picking Vegetables 1912

come and pose in the garden in the evening. Today the mason gave me a lesson in plastering. It is good to do. Mixing malter and sand, then slaping it on the wall with "floats" and making it as smooth as marble... Frescoe painting is awfully hard. All this afternoon I have been struggling to learn.'2*

Carrington 4 s letters reveal that she painted the vegetable

garden scene (left hand panel) (fig. 7) while Lane's was the sheepshearing (centre panel) (fig. 8). The authorship of the third panel of haymaking is not reliably docu- mented, but it is a much more assured work than the other two, suggesting a later date (fig. 9). As a local resi- dent, Lane would have a better opportunity of returning to work at Ashridge. The actual work on the frescoes seems to have been done in September 1913, as described in another of Carrington's letters to Nash. 'Cooie Lane's is best. She is doing sheep shearing. She sings while we work, lustily with much force old bal- lades and folk songs apd Handel. The plastering is a joy to do. But it is mighty hard work.'26

Carrington and Nash were at this time planning frescoes for a church near Uxbridge, a scheme in which Paul Nash was also going to participate. Although sketches were made, the project was abandoned when it was made clear that objections from the parishoners would seriously impede the granting of a faculty, apart from the difficulty of the outbreak of war. It is a loss, as the descriptions of the subjects suggest an attractive neo- Pre-Raphaelitism reminiscent of the work of Stanley Spencer.27

The Great War seems to have dimmed the hopes of a fresco revival in other ways, although mural painting continued to be a lively subject. I have only been able to find two examples of real fresco from the 1920s, both by aristocratic artists connected by family with the

Fig. 8 Constance Lane Sheep Shearing 1912

world of 'The Souls', although no connection between them can be demonstrated. The more ambitious scheme was the Victory Hall at Balcombe, Sussex, by Neville Lytton, afterwards 2nd Baron Lytton (1879-1951), executed in 1923-24. The paintings are carried in a broad band, seven feet high, around three sides of the hall, with the figures of Spes and Dolor flanking the stage end. They are of interest as being one of the few war memorial mural schemes to show the actual conditions of fighting in the trenches (fig. 10), where Lytton had been a co-ordinating editor for war correspondents after being wounded in 1916. Lytton married Judith, the daughter of Wilfred Scawen Blunt, and had lived at Crabbet Park near Balcombe, although his wife obtained a divorce in 1923, the year in which the frescoes were begun. She continued to live at Crabbet as Lady Wentworth, running the Crabbet Arabian Stud. The frescoes were painted under the patronage of Lady Denman of Balcombe Place, who had conceived and planned the building, and is shown in the paintings, which include scenes of peace as well as war. The colours aré light with pale blue backgrounds throughout.28

The second fresco is on a smaller scale, painted in a cottage on the Lambay Castle estate, near Dublin, by Daphne Pollen, (1904-86) née Baring, daughter of the 3rd Lord Revelstoke. She studied at the Slade School 1919-21 and executed the fresco of Archery at Lambay in the summer of 1921, apparently without any previous instruction in fresco (fig. 11 ). As she wrote in her mem- oir, / Remember ; / Remember , 4 1 took my instruction from Cennino Cenini's book, but perforce substituted sand for the marble-dust of his 'intonaco' recipe, omit- ted its burial in the ground for 60 years, and made a guess at how long it might take to recite a Pater or an Ave, this being the unit prescribed for timing the stirring of the colours. As the painting of an area of fresh plaster had to be finished before it hardened, i.e. within 6 to 8

42



Fig. 9 Carrington/Lane? Haymaking

hours, one had to make a long day of it. I used to start at seven each morning, and sometimes not finish till late in the evening.'29 The painting is an ambitious figure subject, showing various members of the artist's family with Lambay Castle, altered and enlarged by Sir Edwin Lutyens, in the background. The fresco remains in rea- sonable condition, although the cottage it is in is at present uninhabited. Daphne Pollen painted a further and much larger mural for All Hallows, Poplar, 1923-32, (destroyed by bombs) with the medium of oil mixed with wax and turpentine on marouflaged canvas which became standard for students from the Slade painting murals in the 1920s.

The head of the Slade, Henry Tonks, had little sympathy for Mary Sargant Florence and her methods, writing to Sir Charles Aitken, Director of the Tate Gallery in 1926, when she raised the matter of fresco in relation to the projected Refreshment Room murals, 'All communica- tion with or about that lady is disagreeable. Language I would use on the matter I had better not. . . .'30 It had been her intention to establish an artist's colony at Lord's Wood, and there are a number of recorded instances of painters visiting her for lessons, including Daphne Pollen.31 Stanley Spencer determined in the early stages of planning the Burghclere Chapel that the paintings 'must be done in fresco',32 and accordingly seems to have consulted Mary Sargant Florence, although the final work was on canvas. This would have been the crowning glory of the fresco revival, but Spencer got no further than experimental panels, although his method of finishing each section of an oil painting before methodically moving on suggests a frus- trated desire to work in fresco.

Another painter who, as a student, consulted Mrs. Sargant Florence was Brian Thomas (b. 1912), a Rome Scholar in Painting and later Principal of the Byam Shaw. While in Rome c.1935, he painted a fresco in the school building but seems not to have used the medium in his many mural commissions.33

Scepticism or downright opposition to fresco caused its subordination to other mural painting media. The advo- cates of fresco could too readily be seen as cranks, and it required patrons who were prepared to risk experiment, and artists prepared to work even harder than mural painting normally requires. An artist such as Augustus Lunn continued to use egg tempera for murals, after its main revival was over, also used sgraffito, but never fresco. The only painter to do so prominently in the 1930s owed his training, not to the English school of fresco, but to the much better-known and influential Mexican school. This was Jack Hastings (b. 1901, Viscount Hastings and 15th Earl of Huntingdon) who, although a supporter of communism, continued the remarkable but probably accidental alliance of aristocra- cy and fresco. He trained under Diego Rivera, claiming that 'it was Rivera who to a great extent rediscovered the difficult technique of fresco'.33 Hastings worked on dentistry murals for the Hall of Science, World's Fair,

Fig. 10 Neville Lytton Victory Hall Mural 1923-4

43



Fig. 11 Daphne Pollen Archery 1921

Chicago, in 1933, and on his return to England in 1935 painted a large fresco, 20ft by 10ft, in the Marx Memorial Library (fig. 12), showing 'the worker of the future upsetting the economic chaos of the present' which survives, although obscured by bookcases.34 His paintings for the vault next to the swimming bath at Buscot House, showing the life of the house, are probably also in fresco, now somewhat faded.

The Marx Memorial library painting shows Rivera's influence clearly, and has little in common with the fresco painters of the pre-war period, except dedication to a cause.

An interesting coda to the Fresco Revival comes in Hans Feibusch's book Mural Painting 1946, which describes the fresco technique, and comments that 'there is a widespread opinion in this country that fresco should be treated like watercolour, and that one should work in transparent tones from light to dark ... it is by no means necessary to follow this approach; fresco can be painted almost like oil, that is to say, in opaque tones.'35 This exposes the rather narrow aims of the early fresco revivalists, but does not invalidate them, particularly if the remarkable achievements of Mary Sargant Florence are allowed to stand as representatives of a movement that never quite happened.

44



Fig. 12 Jack Hastings The worker of the future upsetting the economic chaos of the present 1935

Reference 1 Edward, Croft-Murray Decorative Painting in England

1537-1837 1970, pp.73-74. 2 Jackson, F. Hamilton Mural Painting 1904, p. 130. Leighton's works in spirit-fresco include the altarpiece of St. Michaers, Lyndhurst, Hants, 1864, the two lunettes 'The Arts of War' and 'The Arts of Peace' in the Victoria and Albert Museum 1878-80, and 'Phoenicians tradings with Early Britons on the coast of Cornwall' in the courtyard of the Royal Exchange, 1895.

3 Aslet, Clive 'Putting back fallen glories' Country Life Dec. 18th, 1986.

4 Jackson op. cit. p.67, which also lists the figures of the apos- tles etc. by William Dyce at All Saints, Margaret Street, (1858-59, replaced with paintings on canvas by Sir Ninian Comper) and the frescoes in the RC Church of St. John, Duncan Terrace, Islington, by Edward Armitage, 1859-60, one of which was replaced by an oil painting in 1887 (DNB).

5 Ford Madox Brown, 'Of Mural Painting' in Arts and Crafts Essays 1893, p. 152. 6 Mary Sargant Florence, 'A Survey of the Society's History' in Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators and Painters in Tempera Vol.III, 1936, p. 130. For Joseph Southall, see Joseph Southall 1861-1944, Artist Craftsman , catalogue of exhibition at City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1980. On the involvement of the Birmingham School with Decorative Painting, see George Breeze, 'Decorative Painting' in By Hammer and Hand Alan Crawford, Ed. 1984.

7 The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini, A Contemporary practical Treatise on Quattrocento Painting , translated from the Italian, with notes on Medieval Art Methods, by Christiana J. Herringham, 1899. Christiana Herringham was the daughter of T. W. Powell, who built Piccards Rough, Guildford, designed by Norman Shaw. She married

Sir Wilmot Parker Herringham, physician, in 1880, and died in 1929.

8 The Society was renamed 'The Society of Mural Decorators and Painters in Tempera' following amalgamation in 1912 with the Society of Mural Decorators, formed in connection with the Mural Exhibition at Crosby Hall, Chelsea, held in that year. Three volumes of Papers were published, 1901- 07, 1907-24 and 1925-35. The Society was revivied post- war, and a Yearbook issued 1957-1966. The Society considered other mural painting media, the article on the Chapel at Madresfield Court by Henry Payne in vol.1 being con- cerned with tempera on plaster. 9 Herringham op. cit. p.2 17. 10 Keith Spence, 'A Country Refuge from Bloomsbury' in Country Life Nov. 15th 1973, which describes some of the spartan and eccentric features of the house. See also Partridge, Frances A Pacifist's War 1983 pp. 169-70. Mary Sargant Florence's children were both distinguished, the elder being Professor Philip Sargant Florence of Birmingham University, the younger, Alix collaborating with her husband James Strachey in his work on Freud. Mary Sargant Florence painted in tempera before fresco, and practised book illustration (see The Crystal Ball 1894 Taylor, John Russell The Art Nouveau Book in Britain 1979, p. 152) and designed for needlework, including a Suffragette banner exh. The Edwardian Era , Barbican, 1987-88, and 'Spring' tapestry portière, exh. RA Winter Exhibition 1923. In 1940, Mary Sargant Florence published Colour Co-ordination , a complex treatise. The Sargant Florence papers are in posession of the family in America. She deserves extended study. 11 W. L. Sargant, The Book of Oakham School , privately printed 1928, p.48. This book includes plates of all the frescoes and outline of the story. Four of the paintings have now been partially obscured and mutilated by the installation of

45



a gallery. The remainder are in good condition. Illustrations of two of them can be found in Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators etc. Vol.11, and a detail in Walter Bayes, The Art of Decorative Painting 1927. The work was finished by 1910. 12 Detail illustrated in Spence's article, see note 10. Studies in tempera, fresco, etc. for this work exh. RA Winter Exhibition 1923. William Sargant, the Headmaster of Oakham, posed for the three figures of blind men, and the painting was known in the family as 'The Willies'. I am grateful to Mr. David Messum of Lord's Wood for the loan of a transparency.

13 Tate Gallery Catalogue The Modern British Paintings Drawings and Sculpture by Mary Chamot; Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin; 1964, pp. 18 1-82, which states that 'the scheme was left incomplete owing to the outbreak of war'.

14 'Frescoes of the Old School, Oakham' in Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators etc., Vol.11, 1925, p.53. «5 ibid.

16 'The Influence of Material on Style' in The Arts and Crafts Quarterly Vol.1, 1920, pp. 13-20. 17 Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators etc. Vol.III, 1936, Preface (unpaginated). Mary Sargant Florence also contributed a paper on 'Decorative perspective' to this volume.

18 For example, the inaugural lecture 'A Plea for the Wider Use of Artists and Craftsmen' by William Rothenstein as Professor of Civic Art, University of Sheffield, 1916.

19 John Drinkwater 'Mr. Southall's Birmingham Fresco' in Country Life June 17th 1916, pp.752-53. See also note 6. 29. Illustrated in Joseph Southall 1861-1944 , Artist Craftsman . p.94. 21 'Lime Putty' by John D. Batten in Papers of the Society of Mural Decorators etc. Vol.11, pp.82-86. See also 'Modern Craftsmanship' fig. 3 Fresco Painting by J. D. Batten in The Architects Journal Vol. 57, 1923 00.718-721 & 764- 767.

22 'An Experimental Fresco Class' ibid, pp.87-89 and Pl.VI. 23 Prospectus of South-Western Polytechnic in archives of

King's College, London. The fee registers do not reveal the names of Carrington and Nash, the evidence for their atten- dance being in their correspondence in the Tate Archive. I would like to thank the archivists in both places for their assistance. See also Noel Carrington Carrington 1980 and John Rothenstein John Nash 1983, although these do not illuminate the attempts at mural and fresco by the two artists.

24 'Survey of the Society's development' in Papers of the

Society of Mural Decorators etc. Vol.III, 1935, p. 139. Some examples are cited by Richard Cork in Art Beyond the Galle 1985.

25 Carrington to Nash n.d. [1912] Tate Archive. 26 Carrington to Nash n.d. [1913] Tate Archive. There is one

reference only to the work in Carrington , Letters and Extracts from her diaries ed. David Garnett, 1970, dating the work to 1913, in a letter to Gerald Brennan, June è, 1925, 'They are still intact, and haven't fallen down or changed colour which just proves that frescoes can last in England, which everyone always denies', p.320. 27 Letters in Tate Archive. Carrington was in Dorset in 1915 preparing studies for a projected decoration in the Village Hall of the Bladen Valley 'model' village, built by Sir Ernest Debenham. Rothenstein associates John Nash with this scheme also but there is no evidence that fresco was to be used.

28 I am grateful to Miss Fiona Allardyce who restored the paintings in 1986 for a copy of her notes on the work. My attention was first drawn to these murals by Mr. David Brock of English Heritage. 29 Daphne Pollen, / Remember ; / Remember , privately printed 1983, pp. 150-51. I am grateful to the artist's grandson, Mr. Louis Jebb, for supplying me with this reference and other information, including a photograph of the work.

30 Tonks to Aitken, Feb. 10, 1926. Tate Archive, Tate Gallery Refreshment Room Correspondence. 31 As an entry from Alix Strachey's diary, communicated to me by Mr. Louis Jebb suggests. 32 Spencer to Henry Lamb, Richard Carline Stanley Spencer at War 1978, p. 152. See also ibid. p. 156 'The chief obstacle however, was Stanley's determination to work in fresco, as the Italian Masters had done. ... he needed more information which Mrs. Sargant Florence alone could give.' This is the only reference to Mrs. Sargant Florence.

33 Repr. in British Artists in Italy 1920-1980 , catalogue of a touring exhibition organized by Canterbury College of Art, 1985.

34 Viscount Hastings 'Renaissance in Mexico' in Architectural Review Vol.78, 1935, p.63. 35 See Lynda Morris and Robert Radford The Story of the Artists International Association 1933-1953 , Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1983, pp. 15- 16. 36 Hans Feibusch, Mural Painting 1946, p.71. Mention is also made of a mural by Hans Tisdall 'in a simplified form of fresco' in the Majorca Restaurant, Brewer Street, Soho, 1936, repr. Architectural Review Vol.82, 1937, p.281 under the artist's original name, Hans Aufseeser.

46



ASPECTS OF BRITISH INTERIOR DESIGN || The Fresco Revival in the Early Twentieth Century

Documents

Transcript of ASPECTS OF BRITISH INTERIOR DESIGN || The Fresco Revival in the Early Twentieth Century