The Camden Town Group in Context

... ; Eveline Annie Dear (1889–1980), Letchworth, by whom bequeathed to Tate Gallery 1980.

The Attic Room is painted on a 3-ply plywood panel. The back of the panel has been covered with a white coating, probably contemporary with the priming on the front surface since there are several historic handwritten labels applied onto the panel. White primer has been applied to the front of the panel and the main compositional elements are marked out in a Prussian blue underdrawing (see also Tate T02260). The underdrawing and the white primed surface are visible at the borders between compositional features.

The technique is consistent with Ratcliffe’s other works in the Tate collection and reflects Harold Gilman’s teaching. The paint film is built up of several layers of opaque colour. Paint was applied wet-on-dry and is neatly confined to delineated areas. The well-bound paint was stiff enough to retain the texture of the directional brushwork and to define the contours of the form. The underlying colour, which is exposed at the edges of spaces and objects, was also used to define form and spatial boundaries, for example in the alcove. The patterned detail in the wallpaper was applied onto the underlying opaque colour and, when dried, light impasto colour was dabbed and stippled around the floral pattern. Rough impasto has been used to indicate the diffuse reflection of light from the wall; ridges of paint have also been used to indicate the texture of the grain in the wooden floorboards. The palette comprises complementary colours – purple, green and orange – which form a unified coloured surface. A subtle balance is achieved by the incorporation of hints of primary colours: the blue curtain, the yellow shadow on the wall and a touch of red in the pattern of the rug. The painting now retains much of its original saturation and gloss due to the removal of an old discoloured varnish.

William Ratcliffe depicts his niece Margaret’s bedroom at 4 Torrington Road, Berkhampstead, the address of his brother S.K. Ratcliffe and his family from 1916 to 1925.1 However, the large pair of boots at the centre of the picture indicates that Ratcliffe was himself the occupant of this room at the time it was painted. The simple chair and bed also suggest he may have had in mind Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting of his bedroom at Arles from 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).2 The Dutch artist had been an especially significant influence on Ratcliffe’s teacher Harold Gilman, who died the year Ratcliffe’s painting was first shown.

Following Gilman, Ratcliffe often painted the interiors of the houses in which he stayed. One of his first jobs had been as a pattern designer in London for the Wallpaper Manufacturers’ Combine, and this is perhaps reflected in the precise painting of the wallpaper in this work, even more apparent in the drawing (fig.1), which is exactly the same in outline and was presumably executed as a study for the oil painting, although it is not squared up. The same interest in the decorative possibilities of wallpaper also feature in Gilman’s Interior c.1914–15 (private collection),3 painted in his studio at 47 Maple Street, off Tottenham Court Road. As the art historian Wendy Baron notes, the empty chair with rush seat in Gilman’s picture might also be an homage to van Gogh.4

It seems likely that Eveline Dear (1889–1980), the only recorded owner of this work, acquired it directly from the artist. Dear lived in Letchworth Garden City from at least the 1920s, and had kept a gift shop in the town’s Eastcheap. She also ‘used to paint and for many years worked in a drawing office’.5 After time away in London and elsewhere, Ratcliffe returned to Letchworth to live with his friends Stanley and Signe Parker from 1930 until 1932, and then lodged at Lower Wilbury Farm until 1937.6