The Camden Town Group in Context

Mrs Mary Johanna Gore, the artist’s widow; probably bought at Paterson and Carfax Gallery, London, in 1920 by J.W. Freshfield, who owned it by 1928; probably bought from him by Arthur Tooth and Sons, London, with whom by 1933 when bought by Tate Gallery for £55.

Letchworth is painted in artists’ oil paints on primed stretched canvas. The cloth is a mixture of flax (linen) and hemp threads and has a plain open weave with many slubs and other material trapped in the weave. The mark of the artists’ colourman Percy Smith is stamped on the back of the cloth. The canvas is attached to a four-member stretcher with steel tacks, in their original positions. Sizing is visible in the interstices of the weave at the back of the canvas and forms a minimal layer. White primer is also visible at the back filling the open weave. It is evenly applied covering the extant of the canvas and retaining the weave texture. The priming is composed of two distinct layers: a thin dense layer of lead white with chalk or gypsum, kaolin and zinc white over a thicker more transparent layer of chalk, zinc white or zinc sulphide, kaolin and probably silica extender. Gore seems to have experimented with alternatives to pure lead-based primers in the upper layer, initially reducing the proportion of lead white and adding other materials, including zinc white, and later replacing lead white altogether (see also Tate T01960). It gave him a preparatory surface that was slightly absorbent and retained the rough canvas weave texture. Lead-based primers were also thought to darken over time. Artists had begun to explore alternatives to lead white, such as zinc white, in the late nineteenth century reflecting a growing interest in the whiteness of the preparatory surface dating back to the Pre-Raphaelites in England and the impressionists in France.

The painting is vigorously executed in well-bound oil colours applied to a design freely drawn in dark blue paint (see also Tate T02260). There is no evidence of squaring-up or any other method for transfer from a drawing. The paint is brushed in broken sweeps of colours, contrasting the blue greens and greys of the foliage in shadow with accents of rustic pinks and browns provided by the broken fence, earth and tree trunks. The more acid greens are enlivened with a few strokes of orange. The blue drawing is restated in several areas during painting with rapid strokes that leave a fluid but broken line. In many areas the white ground is left visible through the broken application of the colour. In others, such as the trees on the far side of the field, a sense of distance is created by working the fluid, misty tones wet-in-wet without drawing to delineate the forms. The accent on colour is maintained by the limited tonal variation of mid-tones and tints while avoiding stark contrasts approaching black and white. The painting is unvarnished.

Between August and November 1912 Gore and his wife Mollie lived in Harold Gilman’s house at 100 Wilbury Road, Letchworth Garden City, and it was here that their first child Elizabeth was born (fig.1). Gilman lent them the house while he was away in Sweden, in the wake of the break-up of his marriage. It had been specially designed for Gilman, and included a self-contained artist’s studio, with separate entrance and bedroom above. The accommodation must have been more spacious than the Gores’ Houghton Place flat, and with the added advantage of a proper studio.

The large quantity of work that Gore produced in Letchworth marked an important point in his evolution as an artist. He began to move away from the impressionist style which characterised his Mornington Crescent period pictures into a way of working that was more resolutely modern. The stylisation and simplification of forms and use of pure colour suggest the partial influence of cubism and fauvism. Gore’s Letchworth paintings display a new dedication to geometric planes and pattern making, as well as the use of a staunchly anti-realist, bright and frequently almost lurid palette.

While the exact location shown in Letchworth is difficult to establish with complete certainty, it seems in all likelihood that it is a spot on Norton Common, the area of wooded and common land lying immediately to the north of the town. This was just a short distance from where Gore was staying at Wilbury Road. In the middle distance there is a small bridge over a stream which, if this is Norton Common, would be Pix Brook. The columns visible in the background may be connected with the bowling green on the common. Further evidence to support this location was given by Brynhild Parker, daughter of Stanley Parker. The Parkers lived next door to Gilman at 102 Wilbury Road. In 1982 Brynhild Parker wrote to Letchworth Museum and Art Gallery recalling Gore and that ‘He painted a picture of the Common near us, which is in the Tate’.1 No other picture except for Letchworth would fit this.