The Camden Town Group in Context

The date on this letter from Robert Bevan to James Bolivar Manson reads 18 March 1925; however, this could be a mistake as the content of the letter suggests a date of eleven years earlier. The first London Group exhibition took place in March 1914 but Lucien Pissarro, Manson’s close friend, had resigned from the group before the exhibition opened. Manson was secretary of the group but also resigned in April.

If the date is correct then it is likely that Pissarro resigned from one of the groups that he and Bevan were members of in the 1920s, such as the Modern English Watercolour Society, which held its first exhibition in April 1923, or the Society of Print-Makers, which held its first exhibition in May 1924.

Frances Stenlake, Robert Bevan: From Gauguin to Camden Town, London 2008, pp.169–70.