The Camden Town Group in Context

... ; acquired from Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London, by the Contemporary Art Society 1946, by whom given to the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth 1946; their sale, 14 October 1959, Knight, Frank and Rutley (49, as ‘A London Square’), where bought for £2 by Holder; ... ; Mr and Mrs David Drown; Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London, by 1979, from whom bought by Tate Gallery 1982.

Clarence Gardens is painted on a stretched and primed canvas. Prior to Tate’s acquisition the canvas was lined to stabilise the structure of the painting. The lining consists of a coarser linen canvas stuck to the back of the original canvas with a wax-resin adhesive. The lined canvas is attached to the stretcher with coated-steel tacks. The stretcher, which consists of four pine members with expansion joints, appears old and may be the original, reused after lining.

The original canvas is one piece of linen of close plain weave, which has been prepared with sizing and a thin layer of white primer that does not extend onto the tacking edges of the stretched canvas. The priming is only visible in a few gaps at the boundaries of shapes and within broken brushstrokes of paint. It has the appearance of a lean and absorbent primer that partially fills the troughs in the canvas weave leaving a smooth textured painting surface and has all the characteristics of being prepared by the artist.

There is little visible evidence of preliminary drawing; the few broken, bright blue paint lines that are visible directly on the priming are probably the initial statement of the composition. Most of the drawing is continuous with the rest of the paint work and occurs at all levels of the work. The oil paint is applied in thick but malleable opaque colour brushed within predetermined forms. The accumulation of layers forms a substantial paint film across the surface and creates ridges of paint at the boundaries between forms. The order in which paint was applied is clearly visible in the layering. The paint was sufficiently fluid to allow distinct variations in handling from one area to another in response to the forms depicted. The accumulated slabs of colour describing the distant buildings are in contrast to the far more cursive and expressive handling of the foliage and grass. Although most forms are contained within clearly demarcated shapes, the use of outlines is restrained and bold linear work is reserved to describe the sinuous trunks and branches of the trees.

The colour scheme is dominated by contrasting greens with violets and purples ranging from unmodified hues to subtle tints and shades of grey. Only the sun yellow of the sky and pinks of the bright surface of the reflective road stand in stark tonal contrast to the mid-tones of the gardens and their surroundings. The overall effect creates an integration of natural and man-made forms through colour, light and shadow. The focus is fairly even across the whole picture with no sketchy passages or areas constrained by excessive finish and detail. The painting was varnished after it was lined but it is not known whether it was originally varnished by the artist.

Originally known as Clarence Market, Clarence Gardens NW1 was designed by the architect John Nash (1752–1835) as part of a series of three markets in the area to the east of Regent’s Park. Consisting of York, Cumberland and Clarence Markets, they were originally intended for trading in meat, hay and vegetables respectively. Each was bordered by terraces of small houses intended for artisan dwellers. Clarence Market was renamed Clarence Gardens soon after it was built in 1824, when the centre of the square was occupied by a market garden. The whole area was badly bombed in 1941, and Clarence Gardens was cleared and replaced by council flats in the 1960s.1

Tate’s work is one of two oils Ratcliffe made of Clarence Gardens. The other from c.1911–1912 is smaller and shows only the south-eastern corner of the square (fig.1). One of the works was exhibited at the third Camden Town Group exhibition in December 1912, and it seems reasonable to assume it was the larger and more complex Tate work. Its price listed in the catalogue was 15 guineas, supporting it being a larger painting. In a review of the exhibition in the Daily Telegraph, the critic Sir Claude Phillips stated:

Ratcliffe may have been stimulated to make these works by his friendship with Harold Gilman, who also painted two pictures of the square around 1912 (fig.2). Although depictions of north London squares and the backs of houses were a key feature of Camden Town painting – of Gore and Gilman in particular – they represent a relatively small part of Ratcliffe’s output. For the most part the artist favoured interior scenes or landscapes and rural subjects, like those he produced in Letchworth Garden City and in Sweden, where he travelled in 1913.

Clarence Gardens is thought to be the only picture assigned by the Contemporary Art Society to be subsequently sold by the recipient institution, although the art historian Wendy Baron states that ‘The Bournemouth gallery received this picture from the C.A.S. as London Square and subsequently sold it at auction on behalf of the corporation’.3 The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery sold it at auction in 1959 for £2.