Camden Town Group

{{Short description|Group of English Post-Impressionist artists}}

File:Walter Sickert photo by George Charles Beresford 1911.jpg]]

The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.

History

In 1908, critic Frank Rutter created the Allied Artists Association (AAA), a group separate from the Royal Academy artistic societies and modelled on the French Salon des Indépendants. Many of the artists who became the Camden Town Group exhibited with the AAA.

File:Harold Gilman 001.jpg. Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table, 1917]]

The members of the Camden Town Group included Walter Sickert, Harold Gilman, Spencer Frederick Gore, Lucien Pissarro (the son of French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro), Wyndham Lewis, Walter Bayes, J. B. Manson, Robert Bevan, Augustus John, Henry Lamb, Charles Ginner, and John Doman Turner.

Influences include Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin whose work can clearly be traced throughout this group's work. Their portrayal of much of London before and during World War I is historically interesting and artistically important.Spalding, Dictionary of British Art, vol.VI, p.19-22

File:Mare-and-Foal.jpg. Mare and Foal, 1917]]

In the Cinema by Malcolm Drummond is noted for its claustrophobic feeling. It is an interesting foil to the work of Sickert who painted many rowdy music hall scenes, including Gallery of the Old Mogul (also depicting the viewers of a film). Sickert's Ennui of 1914 is often considered the masterpiece of this group's work, with its portrayal of boredom and apathy in the mold of Flaubert and others.

The group organized the exhibition of Cubist and Post-Impressionist paintings.

A major retrospective of the group's works was held at Tate Britain in London in 2008. The show did not include eight of the members, among them Duncan Grant, J. D. Innes, Augustus John, Henry Lamb, John Doman Turner, Wyndham Lewis and J. B. Manson, who was, according to Wendy Baron, of "too little individual character".{{cite news|last1=Lambirth|first1=Andrew|title=Velvet revolutionaries|url=http://www.spectator.co.uk/2008/03/velvet-revolutionaries/|accessdate=13 March 2016|work=The Spectator|date=5 March 2008}}

Members

File:Manson-Lucien-Pissaro-Reading.jpg. Lucien Pissarro Reading, est. 1913]]

It was decided that there should be a 16-member, men only, limit on the group: Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot died after the first exhibition, and Duncan Grant was elected to take his place.Baron, Wendy and Sickert, Walter. Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, p. 81, Yale University Press, 2006. {{ISBN|0-300-11129-0}}, {{ISBN|978-0-300-11129-3}}. Available on [https://books.google.com/books?id=4S5K_DSH4hgC&pg=PA508&dq=Sickert:+Paintings+and+Drawings,+p.+81&sig=ACfU3U1BfOSDOFz3KnByGFMIJNDNnIoikQ#PPA81,M1 Google books].

Although women were excluded from the Camden Town Group, a few women artists like Ethel Sands, Anna Hope Hudson and Marjorie Sherlock were involved on the periphery; others, like Sylvia Gosse, were cut out altogether.Ian Chilvers, [https://www.questia.com/read/74370572 A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100417003059/http://www.questia.com/read/74370572 |date=17 April 2010 }} (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 110.

Notes and references

External links

[http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group Camden Town Group in Context at Tate]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080305020845/http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue12/camdentown.htm James Beechey on the Camden Town Group]
[http://johndomanturner.com John Doman Turner]

Category:British artist groups and collectives

Category:Post-Impressionism

Category:English art

Category:Camden Town

Category:History of the London Borough of Camden

Camden Town Group

History

Members

See also

Notes and references

Further reading

External links