The Camden Town Group in Context

Charles Ginner was born in Cannes in the south of France and retained his French accent for many years after moving to England in late 1909. Here he caricatures his speech in an amusing letter to Manson, the secretary of the Camden Town Group. The meeting that Ginner refers to took place on 25 October and discussed the formation of a new society, soon to be called the London Group (TGA 806/10/6).

Ginner and Harold Gilman were close friends and allies and Gilman was well known for his strong-minded views. Here Ginner jokes that ‘when “Gilman speaks” you might come out with the word “Yas” & everybody will think I am there’. Walter Sickert also comically entitled a portrait of the artist Mr Gilman Speaks 1912 (fig.1).

Ginner gives his current address as Applehayes in Clayhidon, Somerset, a farm owned by an ex-Slade student, Harold Bertram Harrison. Ginner stayed with Harrison on a few occasions, sometimes with Spencer Gore and Robert Bevan, and painted several landscapes there.

Rosalind Billingham, Artists at Applehayes: Camden Town Painters at a West Country Farm, 1909–1924, exhibition catalogue, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry 1986.