The Camden Town Group in Context

Purchased from the artist for £55 by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest and presented to Tate Gallery 1941.

Hartland Point from Boscastle is painted in artists’ oil paints on primed stretched canvas. There are areas of cupped distortions in the canvas resulting from the contraction of the paint, which is a common feature of Ginner’s work, associated with the thickness of the paint (see also Tate T03096). The cloth is a fine, plain-weave linen, which appears to have been sized and primed with white oil-type priming. The primer has been evenly applied and retains the fine canvas weave texture, producing a smooth, finely grained preparatory surface. No initial drawing remains visible although the composition is carefully planned and there is little evidence of changes during painting (see also Tate N05276). Ginner seems to have been remarkably consistent in his method of painting. The technique that he employed in his later years was described by his friend Marjorie Lilly:

It is difficult to discern the early stages of his work owing to the thickness of the final paint layer. On the whole the technical features of this work appear familiar. The rich paint of the landscape and buildings is applied in short brushstrokes of thick paint with a controlled viscosity. The handling of the paint is used to model the forms of the landscape, and layers are methodically overlaid to build up the details, such as the tiled roofs. This accumulation of paint has produced an intricate surface of lipped impastos, which is a key characteristic of Ginner’s work. It is probable, however, that there are at least minor variations in materials and technique, in particular in his manipulation of the paint medium. The development of areas of ragged brittle cracks and cupping of the paint have resulted from layers of medium-rich colour with underlying leaner paint peeling away from the smooth surface of the priming. The paint does appear to have had other media added to the darker colours to maintain their gloss and saturation. In other areas, such as the sky, the paint is slightly leaner and drier in appearance, mirroring an effect seen in Snow in Pimlico (Tate N05270). Ginner’s careful control of the paint medium provides a technical focus for his work (see also Tate T03096) through which it is possible to discern a more experimental approach in his painting.

This work was painted from a drawing made in the summer of 1940, which is probably the squared pencil drawing of the same title that was sold at Christie’s on 14 May 1993.1 Ginner’s sister, Ruby Ginner Dyer, wrote to the Tate Gallery on 11 and 15 August 1957 that this painting

Boscastle is on the north coast of Cornwall near the Devon border. The view is looking due north to High Cliff and Hartland Point. The drawing must have been made on a clear day, and shows the whole west-facing coast of Devon. The small patch of sea is bright blue, matching the intense and even tones of green, grey and brown. A watercolour by Ginner, Beeney Cliff, Boscastle,3 is a closer focus of the same view, tilted downwards slightly to include a large, walled kitchen garden in the foreground, which was probably his sister’s garden. Ginner first painted here in 1915 and continued to do so until 1947. Since he painted from drawings the dates of the paintings do not necessarily indicate exactly when he stayed there, but his notebooks list Boscastle pictures in 1915, 1919, 1922, 1935 and in 1941–3.4

Ginner exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1941, showing this painting and another, Watergate, Chester. He was elected an Associate Royal Academician in 1942. In the early years of the war he painted very little; his notebooks show that in 1941 he made only three paintings and one drawing. In 1941 or 1942 he moved to Standon in Hertfordshire to stay with the painter and collector Edward Le Bas after his London studio was damaged by bombing.

The painting is listed in the artist’s third notebook under the same title, and marked as ‘Sold The Chantrey Bequest £55.0.0’.5