The Camden Town Group in Context

Purchased from the artist for 12 guineas (£12 12s) via the Goupil Gallery, London, 1924.

From a Hampstead Window is executed in pen and ink and watercolour on wove paper. The off-white paper is textured and appears to be of good quality, appropriate for a finished drawing intended for display. There are numerous pin holes along all four of the edges made by drawing pins. The function of these is not known but it is possible that Ginner used pins to secure the paper to a drawing board and/or attached threads to the pins to create plumb lines to measure the angles of the strong horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines of the composition. The image is centred on the sheet and drawn within a square measuring 350 x 230 mm. Faint graphite lines are visible in areas where the artist has altered the position of certain elements, such as the church steeple. The outlines of the main forms are drawn in pen and black ink, with cross-hatching lines to indicate areas of shadow. Watercolours are generally confined within the outlined shapes and are evenly applied as solid blocks of colour. There are numerous pencil annotations and touches of watercolour in the right-hand margin made by the artist to blot the brush and test the colours and ensure that they were correct when applied to the image. The image is in good condition. The watercolour was surface cleaned, washed, pressed and the mount replaced in 1992.

Ginner exhibited watercolours at the Goupil Gallery in January 1924; this one was made just before that exhibition after a fall of snow. In his second notebook it is recorded as the last item made in 1923, and so was likely to have been drawn in December.1 It is a finished watercolour for display, not a preparatory drawing for a painting. Painted from a mirror, it shows a reversed view of Hampstead as seen from the attic of 61 Hampstead High Street, the address where Ginner lived from 1919 to 1938.

The wide margins of the paper are full of colour notes, some of them linked to numbered places on the edge of the picture. On the right these are partly covered with dabs of watercolour, where Ginner was blotting the brush or testing colours as the picture was painted. The colour notes indicate Ginner’s particular interest in bricks and chimneys. although they are difficult to read and the words in this list might not all be accurate. At the top it reads:

Running down the left-hand side:

At the bottom of the paper:

And running down the right-hand side:

The railings as seen from Ginner’s window are there today just as in the watercolour, and one building in the street is the same.2 The church spire belonged to Trinity Presbyterian Church, which has been demolished. The work appears to have been drawn accurately, but then the whole image – window, railings and view – are reversed from left to right, as if a preparatory drawing had been turned upside down and a copy made. This was noted in the 1964 Tate Gallery catalogue.3 Responding to the Assistant Keeper Mary Chamot’s queries, Ginner’s sister Ruby Ginner Dyer replied:

The reference in Colour magazine for the summer of 1924 shows that the watercolour was then on display at the Tate Gallery. The author described it as a welcome appearance of modern art at the gallery:

Ginner often included the window and window-sill in his views. His oil painting Roof Tops (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston),6 for example, includes a similar window and guard rail in front of a view of a different town.