The Camden Town Group in Context

... ; Judge William Evans (1861–1918), probably bought at Carfax Gallery, London, in February 1916; bought at Goupil Gallery, London, May–June 1918 by Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1863–1931); his sale, Christie’s 12 June 1920 (42, as ‘The Tree’), bought in; his widow, Lady Olivier Cavendish-Bentinck by whom bequeathed to Tate Gallery 1940.

Mornington Crescent is painted in artists’ oil paints on primed stretched canvas. The cloth is plain, open-weave linen. It is attached to the stretcher with evenly spaced tacks that are mostly in their original positions. The canvas has been sized but most of the glue was absorbed into the cloth when applied. White priming extends to the tacking edges and retains the canvas weave texture. It is composed of two distinct layers and seems to have been intended to provide particular (preparatory) surface properties (see also Tate N04675). The stamp of the artists’ colourman Percy Young is impressed into one of the stretcher members. Young’s stamp has been found on a number of stretchers on Gore’s paintings, as well as on the canvas. The painting’s dimensions conform to a standard commercial size, historically described as ‘three-quarter size’. It is possible that Gore purchased the canvas pre-stretched or, given that the mark is on the stretcher and that the canvas edges have been roughly cut (in particular the right-hand edge), that Gore bought a standard-sized stretcher and canvas on the roll and prepared the support himself.

There is no trace of any underdrawing. A variety of techniques have been employed to produce a lively and apparently spontaneous finish, emphasising the play of light across the surface. Fluid paint applied in full strokes was allowed to sink into the interstices of the canvas, retaining the weave texture. In contrast, paint of a paste-like consistency was loaded onto a stiff brush to form raised impasto or scumbled onto the surface with a dry brush, accumulating on the tops of the canvas weave and leaving patches of priming exposed. Where colour has been modified or compositional elements have been overlaid, such as the bench, opaque paint is applied wet-on-dry, so as not to pick up colour from underlying layers. In the later stages paint is also applied wet-in-wet, mixing on the surface, such as the foliage of the trees at the left. Despite the range in handling, there is no evidence of additional media mixed in with the oil to alter the paint properties.

Gore appears to have used artists’ oil tube paints, which in some cases he has mixed to produce opaque colours. The range of pigments used is consistent with the colours listed by Gore in a letter to his pupil John Doman Turner in 1910, with the addition of some cadmium colours: ‘Colours Flake White, Rose madder, Vermilion, Chrome and Lemon Chrome, Ultramarine, Cobalt, Viridian, oxide of Chromium’.1 These were strong, spectrally pure colours, which were readily available from artists’ colourmen, and any black or earth colours have been excluded. This restricted ‘spectral’ palette mirrors that developed by French impressionist painters from the late nineteenth century.

The painting was varnished when acquired by Tate but it had significantly discoloured, distorting the colour values and impairing the visibility of details. The discoloured varnish was removed and the painting has been left unvarnished, which is thought to have been the artist’s original intention.

This painting shows Mornington Crescent Gardens, which Gore painted many times when he was living at 31 Mornington Crescent from 1911 until his marriage in 1912 (fig.1). Here he lodged with the local vicar, the Reverend Osmond Andrew Archer, and was a few doors away from Walter Sickert who lived at number 6. The gardens were directly in front of the house, and Gore painted the view from the front windows several times, for instance From a Window at 31 Mornington Crescent 1911 (private collection).1 However, Mornington Crescent is a view from ground level within the park itself, and may perhaps have been painted in front of the subject. Gore made a number of other pictures in the gardens, including The Avenue c.1910 (private collection)2 and Mornington Crescent c.1911 (private collection).3

The bare tree suggests that Gore must have painted the Tate painting either before the spring or after the autumn of 1911. The dating of the canvas comes from when it was shown at the Carfax Gallery in 1916, and is presumably accurate as the exhibition was put together with the input of Gore’s widow.

In November 1910, Gore described his recommended way of painting to his pupil John Doman Turner:

Gore’s practice was to either paint directly from nature, before the subject, or else to make the painting solely in the studio, based on drawings that had been made on the spot. He held strong views about this way of working. He wrote to Doman Turner:

Gore ruminated further on the compromise that an artist had to make between precise observation and the way in which the subject was represented:

In his review of Gore’s solo exhibition at the Chenil Galleries in 1911, Frank Rutter in the Sunday Times drew particular attention to Gore’s Mornington Crescent pictures. Under the sub-heading ‘The London Landscape’, Rutter wrote:

Sickert similarly highlighted the series of views Gore made of Mornington Crescent gardens in his obituary:

The construction of Mornington Crescent NW1 was begun in 1821 as part of the Fitzroy family estate, and was named after the Earl of Mornington who had married into the Fitzroy family. The northerly part of the crescent, where Gore later lived, was originally called Southampton Street, but this was changed to be part of Mornington Crescent in 1864. Originally it was quite a smart address, and in the nineteenth century had been a place to live for artists and writers: the painter William Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867) lived at number 36 from 1834 to 1841, Frederick Richard Pickersgill (1820–1900) succeeded him in the same house, and George Cruikshank (1792–1878) lived round the corner at 48 Mornington Place.10 But by the time Gore and Sickert moved there it had started to be a less affluent area, as Rutter’s mention of it being considered ‘a drab and sordid neighbourhood’ suggests.11 Charles Booth inspected the street on 28 October 1898 as part of his survey of London poverty, and recorded in his notebook: ‘Mornington Crescent – of substantial 4 storey houses still probably exclusively of middle class but going down and now largely let in apartments.’12 Booth coloured the street red on his Maps Descriptive of London Poverty (1898–9), indicating the second most affluent level in his system of categorisation, described as ‘Middle class. Well-to-do.’ In the first volume of the final edition of Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London (1902) he expounded further on his system of categorisation and described red as ‘Lower middle class. Shopkeepers and small employers, clerks and subordinate professional men. A hardworking sober, energetic class.’13

The gardens, originally intended for the enjoyment and leisure of Mornington Crescent’s inhabitants, were built over in 1928 when the Carreras cigarette factory was constructed. Preparation for this development elicited a letter to the Times from Walter Bayes, believing shops were to be built there. Under the heading ‘Spencer Gore’s Grove’, Bayes wrote:

The first recorded owner of Mornington Crescent was Judge William Evans (1861–1918). However, it is likely that there was a previous owner because it does not bear the stamp that was applied to all work left in Gore’s studio when he died in 1914. Evans probably did not acquire it until 1916 when it was shown at the Carfax Gallery, as it is not recorded as having been lent by him. Evans was born in Merthyr Tydfil in December 1847 and was on the County Court Bench for mid-Wales from 1897. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, where he took honours in Classics and Law, and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1870. Some time after he joined the circuit of South Wales and Chester and went on commissions to Australia, France and Spain. He wrote on legal subjects but also about Welsh poetry, and died while presiding in court in Oswestry on 15 February 1918.15 Evans put together an eclectic collection of British art in the last twenty years of his life. He had been one of those whom Sickert invited to the Saturday ‘At Homes’ at Fitzroy Street, and Evans bought a large number of paintings and drawings by him. Evans’s widow recalled that ‘when she and her husband ... went to Sickert’s studio he would show them a pile of small sketches and drawings and ask them to take their pick. He would then paint in oil from whatever they chose, usually for £25.’16

Evans also acquired works by Bayes, Bevan, Ginner and Gilman, including Gilman’s Lady on a Sofa exhibited 1910 (Tate N05831). The other Gores that Evans acquired, all oils, were The Mirror. Woman by a Dressing Table c.1908–9 (Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg), The Sand Pit (perhaps The Gravel Pit c.1909, now in Kirkaldy Museum and Art Gallery), View through Trees (unidentified) and At a Music Hall (unidentified). Judge Evans’s collection was exhibited at the Goupil Gallery from May to June 1918, where works were evidently offered for sale by his widow. The foreword to the catalogue was written by Charles Aitken, Director of the Tate Gallery, who noted that Evans’s collection

Contrasting Evans’s collection with the perceived failures of the Chantrey purchases, the Times described it as ‘interesting as showing what may be done by a buyer of catholic but individual taste who buys only what he likes himself ... He knew a good Sickert when he saw it; and he made very few mistakes, no doubt because he did not buy except when he enjoyed ... And yet his taste was in the main conservative; it differed from that of those who buy for the Chantrey Bequest in that it was his own and was good.’18