The Camden Town Group in Context

By descent to Robert Alexander Bevan (1901–1974), the artist’s son, and presented by him and the artist’s family to Tate Gallery 1954.

Fried Fish Shop was painted over an earlier painting that was cut down and obliterated with white paint. The canvas is a plain weave cloth, probably linen, with double warp and weft threads. It appears to be commercially prepared, with animal glue sizing and white oil priming. The original painting has been cut down at the top, bottom and right-hand edges and then re-stretched. A layer of stiff white paint, which has filled the canvas weave texture and imparted an overall brushed texture, was applied to mask the earlier work. During painting the support was again modified, by flattening the left-hand tacking margin to extend the left edge and re-stretch it. The old tacking margin is now visible as a vertical ridge running down the left-hand side of the painting.

The earlier picture underneath is visible where there have been losses around the tacking margins. Layers of coloured and white paint from the second painting campaign have flaked off to reveal orange paint over the original white priming. Fried Fish Shop is composed of several coloured layers applied over the white under-layer. The lower layers of the picture are mainly thin scumbled paint through which the white under-layer remains visible. Drawing is reinstated during painting with strong dark brush lines. The final modifications were applied after the painting had been re-stretched to its current size. These dabs and streaks of more opaque paint modify the glowing colour of the night and define the forms. The overall effect is of contrasting light and application; the warm glow of the shop interior contrasts with the amorphous cool darks of the foggy street outside.

The condition of the painting reflects its complex construction and history. Following re-stretching during painting, networks of cracks formed and small areas of paint flaked away from around the tacking edges where the bond between the earlier and later painting is weak.

Shops selling fried fish and chips were to be found in large numbers in London by the date this picture was made (fig.1). This kind of food was characterised as a staple of working class diet, although in many cases it was in fact a more occasional luxury. It was extremely popular, and at this time considered highly nourishing. However, the noxious odours given off by the poor quality oils frequently used for frying led to numerous prosecutions for public nuisance in the early years of the century. Fried fish shops were viewed with disdain by the middle classes, both for their smell and their popular working class ethos. In the Public Health Act of 1907 – the same date as this picture – fried fish shops were specifically designated an ‘offensive trade’, and fryers came under strong pressure to use better quality oils and hoods to collect the fumes.1

Karlowska painted a related shop subject in 1914, The Wine Shop (private collection).2 This shows a shop interior, but has a very similar composition and approach in distributing the figures across the span of the picture. It is painted in a more adventurous palette, principally of red and green. Comparison might be drawn with Walter Sickert’s small number of much earlier and very different paintings of French shop fronts made in the late 1880s such as The Red Shop (fig.2). These are more conventionally impressionist in style, and do not include figures, but in some degree are similar in intent. Karlowska’s focus in Fried Fish Shop lies principally in the figures rather than the shop which, apart from its counter, is almost without feature. There is a strong sense of London life glimpsed in passing, a snapshot of working class experience from the vantage of the pavement. The picture is also an exercise in capturing the fall of yellow gaslight through the shop window, penetrating the gloom of the street.

In 1910 Karlowska’s work had attracted critical praise from the art critic Huntly Carter, who was a supporter of other future members of the Camden Town Group circle, notably Spencer Gore and Harold Gilman. He was particularly interested in the emotive potential of colour, and partly for this reason seems to have been attracted to Karlowska. He also wrote favourably in the New Age about women painters:

Writing of Fried Fish Shop when it was exhibited with the Women’s International Art Club in 1911, Carter wrote:

The art critic Frank Rutter also wrote favourably of Fried Fish Shop: