The Camden Town Group: Paintings and Drawings in the Tate Collection
 Walter Richard Sickert Ennui circa 1914 Tate. Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1924. © Estate of Walter R. Sickert. All Rights Reserved. DACS 2002 |
A loose association of about fifteen artists in London in the years around 1910, the Camden Town Group was a distinctive and leading force in the development of modern British art. The Group held exhibitions in 1911 and 1912, but effectively they had formed a few years beforehand under the leadership of Walter Sickert. The principal artists were Walter Sickert, Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner and Robert Bevan. They shared certain attitudes to modern subject matter, especially favouring scenes of ordinary life in London, painted with intense, dry colours. In effect, they were Post-Impressionists, taking Impressionist naturalism to new areas. Tate holds the world’s major collection of Camden Town pictures, with numerous paintings from throughout the lives of all the major artists and of the relevant period for their associates. This research project - the first scholarly review of Tate's holdings in this area – will provide new and wide-ranging information about these works and a fresh appraisal of this important British modern movement. |
The project will lead to a published catalogue with essays on aspects of the Camden Town Group’s history and reception, biographies of each of the artists and detailed texts on the 166 works in the collection. Each entry will have a discursive provenance, a full exhibition history and a listing of all major literary and critical references to the work. This will be accompanied by an extensive textual commentary and analysis which places each picture within a wide-ranging discussion of the social and historical issues that it raises. The entries will also provide detailed information provided by Tate conservators about the artists' techniques and the condition of each work.
The writing phase of the project began in 2002 and is due to be completed by the end of 2006.
Project team:
Robert Upstone, Curator, Tate Collection (co-ordinator); David Fraser Jenkins, Senior Curator, Tate Collection; Nicola Moorby, Cataloguing Assistant, Tate Collection; Heather Birchall, Assistant Curator, Tate Collection; Roy Perry, Head of Conservation; Stephen Hackney, Head of Conservation Science; Sarah Morgan, Conservation Administrator.
Supported by The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation 2002-4.
Updated November 2006
