The Camden Town Group in Context

Given by the artist to Robert Bevan (1865–1925); by descent to the artist’s son, Robert Alexander Bevan (1901–1974), and thence by descent to his wife Natalie (1909–2007); accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate 2010.f

Madeline Knox is painted in artists’ oil paints on a single piece of simple plain-weave linen. The off-white priming was applied commercially as it extends to the cut edges of the support. The primed canvas is attached to its accessory support with ferrous tacks, now rusted. As there are no other holes visible in the tacking margin it can be assumed that this is the original stretcher and attachment.

The initial sketch was done in dark blue diluted oil paint and, although most of the contours are now covered, there are glimpses of a sketchy outline to the left of the figure’s skirt. The architectural structure, which seems to have been laid-in first, is a less modelled and impastoed part of the painting. Elsewhere, the paint was applied thickly with only a little addition of thinners or painting medium, and therefore each brushstroke remains distinct. The coat and dress are laid-in with thick impasto in a rich red with traces of yellow, blue and green visible under magnification. Compared to the face they were painted more flowingly with longer, more sweeping brushstrokes. The face seems to have a yellow and green underlay in the shadows, with a full palette of bright colours in the upper layers, including rose madder (as seen in ultra-violet light). The colours are applied wet-in-wet, with a smaller brush leaving stiffer peaks of paint. The background is painted up to and over the edges of the figure. Some areas of priming are left exposed, especially in the background and the lower parts of the dress.

It is probable that the painting was originally unvarnished, as there appears to be dirt beneath the varnish gathered into the crevices of the textured paint. The thick, glossy, yellowed natural resin varnish that had pooled in the crevices of the impasto all over the surface was removed by Tate conservators.

In this painting a young woman stands by a stone fireplace with her head lowered, absent-mindedly fingering her coat. Above the mantelpiece is a large but cropped gilt-framed mirror that reveals very little from its dark reflection; the gold is echoed in the buttons that punctuate the dark expanse of the woman’s jacket and dress. The complementary colours of green and red dominate the painting, with the red-brown of the figure’s clothing contrasting with the predominantly cream-green colours of the wallpaper. A strong light casts a dark shadow on to the fireplace and wallpaper immediately behind the figure.

Although ostensibly a portrait, there are few clues about the woman’s character or background. The setting is ambiguous: is this a living room or a bedroom (the piece of furniture to the left of the figure could be a sofa or a bed)? Although the mood of the painting is calm and introspective, the figure is also wearing a jacket and shoes: is she about to leave the room or has she just returned?

When first exhibited in 1934 this painting was entitled Interior with Standing Figure (it was not to be identified as a portrait of Madeline Knox until the 1950s). Gilman depicted lone women in interiors throughout his career; see, for example, such early works as Edwardian Interior c.1907 (Tate T00096, fig.1), French Interior c.1907 (Tate N05783) and Lady on a Sofa c.1910 (Tate N05831), and, later, Head of a Girl c.1911 (fig.2), The Coral Necklace 1914 (fig.3) and Girl with a Teacup c.1914–15 (private collection).1 In Girl by a Mantelpiece 1914 (Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent),2 a young girl stands next to the same fireplace; the glass ornament behind her could be the same as the object that sits on the mantelpiece behind Madeline Knox in Tate’s painting.

Madeline Knox relates to another work by Gilman of the same period, Meditation 1910–11 (fig.4). Indeed, the art historian Wendy Baron has suggested that both works may depict Knox,3 the figures appearing to have similar hairstyles and facial characteristics. However, Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby has stated that the figure in Meditation is thought to be Gilman’s neighbour in Letchworth, Signe Parker.4 Contemporary photographs of Knox and Parker reveal that the two women looked quite different, Knox being smaller and with a more slender face, confirming that Meditation is a portrait of Parker rather than Knox (figs.5 and 6). Nevertheless, the two paintings have a similar composition, presenting full-length views of women in domestic interiors with dark shadows cast on the wall behind them. Although the mood of Meditation is rather more sombre, both have an introspective atmosphere.

In his introduction to the 1913 Post-Impressionist and Futurist Exhibition, the curator and critic Frank Rutter described Gilman, Spencer Gore and Charles Ginner as the ‘“intimists” of England’, likening them to the French painters Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard who often depicted women in highly decorated, middle class interiors.5 But many other artists in Britain also focused on this theme in the period. Following the example of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and works such as his Symphony in White, No.2: The Little White Girl 1864 (Tate N03418), William Rothenstein, William Orpen and Ambrose McEvoy regularly exhibited paintings of figures in interiors at the New English Art Club (figs.7–9). Gwen John, who like Gilman was a graduate from the Slade, also painted solitary female figures in interior scenes (see, for example, her Chloë Boughton-Leigh 1904–8, Tate N04088 fig.10, shown at the New English Art Club in 1908).

While Gilman’s work has similarities with these artists’ paintings, his interiors also have affinities with a Northern European tradition. According to his friend Louis Fergusson, Gilman ‘never tired of looking through a book of reproductions of Vermeer of Delft’,6 and it could be argued that his interiors were inspired by the use of space in the work of Johannes Vermeer and other Dutch Golden Age painters. But the reflective mood and lack of defined occupation of Gilman’s figures also suggest comparison with paintings by Scandinavian artists of the time, such as the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (Tate N04106, fig.11). Scandinavian art was often described and reproduced in the pages of the influential Studio magazine in the period, and Gilman might have seen the exhibition of Danish painting at the Guildhall Art Gallery in early 1907 in which work by such artists as Hammershøi, Anna Ancher and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg was shown. The figure in Meditation, Gilman’s friend and neighbour Signe Parker (née Bergström), was from Sweden; Gilman himself visited Sweden in 1912 and Norway in 1913.

As well as a subject painting of a woman in an interior, this work is also a portrait of an individual, the artist Madeline Knox (1890–1975). Gilman painted many of his fellow artist friends over the years, including Spencer Gore,7 Stanislawa de Karlowska8 and Sylvia Gosse.9

Knox was brought up in Grantham in Lincolnshire and moved to London in 1906, briefly studying at the Lambeth School of Art.10 She went on to study at the Westminster School of Art in Vincent Square from 1907 to 1910, where she trained under Sickert for her final two years. In 1909 she joined his etching class, and later that year helped him to set up an etching school at 209 Hampstead Road. When it moved to 140 Hampstead Road the school was named Rowlandson House, and painting and drawing were also taught (see Tate N05088). Sickert’s many commitments at this time made him ill, however, which meant that Knox was left in charge of the school. This, in turn, made her ill, leading her to leave the school in late 1910. Sickert wrote to his friends Ethel Sands and Nan Hudson:

Around 1911 Knox travelled to Canada where she lived until 1914–15 (which confirms that this painting was made no later than 1911).13 Upon returning to London, she met Arthur Clifton (1863–1932) who ran the Carfax Gallery where the Camden Town Group had held their three exhibitions in 1911 and 1912.14 The two later married.

Knox exhibited with the New English Art Club in 1915 and held a successful solo show at the Carfax in October 1916, Watercolour Drawings by Madeline Knox, in which all the works were sold. Reviews were extremely positive. The critic of the Morning Post wrote:

An unidentified press cutting shows another critic responding favourably:

For the reviewer Sir Claude Phillips, writing in the Daily Telegraph:

Knox later held an Exhibition of Watercolour Drawings of Sussex, Perigord, and the Pyrenées Orientales at the Twenty One Gallery in London in November 1924. In 1925 she settled in Mersham in Kent where she gave up painting and drawing in favour of embroidery. She was commissioned in the 1930s by Mr and Mrs J.L. Behrend to embroider the altar frontal for the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, Hampshire, where Stanley Spencer’s famous large-scale paintings can be found. Using fine natural linen embroidered with linen thread and green and gold silk thread, she created the frontal using colours to complement Spencer’s Resurrection of the Soldiers, on the wall behind the altar.18

It is generally thought that Gilman presented this painting as a gift to his fellow Camden Town Group member Robert Bevan, probably around the time of its execution. In her 2008 study of Bevan, however, Frances Stenlake states that Bevan bought it from his friend in about 1910.19 It was inherited by the artist’s son, Robert A. Bevan, who hung it in his home Boxted House in Boxted, Essex.