Life with art

Benton End and the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing

An exhibition at Firstsite, Colchester, England.

Life with Art

Benton End and the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing

An exhibition at Firstsite, Colchester, England.

'Life with Art: Benton End and the East Anglian School of painting and drawing',

at Firstsite, Colchester, England.

A review by Martin A Bradley

After three visits to see the exhibition 'Life with Art: Benton End and the East Anglian School of painting and drawing', at Firstsite, Colchester, I realised that I really wanted to write about that experience, and the insights offered to we visitors.

Those who know me, understand that I have only been back in England for a year (June 4th), after seventeen years lounging around Asia. I have an awful lot of catching up to do in regard to art in the UK, but more specifically art in East Anglia.

A slight background check might reveal my Colchester roots, my schooling at St. Helena Secondary Modern, training at Colchester School of Art, membership to the Colchester Art Society (finally renewed), exhibitions of my brave attempts to be an artist (whatever that may be), and exhibitions that I curated for others in the area, plus a brief interlude (when I was studying a Masters in Gallery Studies at the University of Essex), of volunteering at The Minories.

My sights, at that time, were set on Asia and Asian art. Now I yearn to discover more about the arts in my own country, in particular the art which has taken place near Colchester, in East Anglia. That Firstsite exhibition was a wonderful start. Thank you all who were involved in its creation, and curation.

“This exhibition showcases the network of artists and cultural figures with links to the art school. Its Influence in the formation of the Colchester Art Society. And the inspirational way of life and approach to teaching and gardening encouraged by Morris and Lott-Haines. Made in partnership with Colchester Art Society. With support from We Are The Minories. The exhibition features over a hundred artworks. Including works by Morris and Lett-Haines. Drawn from collections from across the UK. Alongside these are artworks by artists who studied at Benton End including David Carr. Lucian Freud. Maggi Hambling. Frances Hodgkin. Valerie Thornton. And Denis Wirth-Miller.”

From the introduction to the Firstsite exhibition 'Life with Art: Benton End and the East Anglian School of painting and drawing' (11th December 2021 to 18th April 2022). (Dark pink board).

From the end of last year (2021) and until the beginning of this year (2022), ‘Firstsite’ (a visual arts organisation opened in Colchester during 2011) presented a major exhibition of important art and artists with connections to Colchester and its surrounding countryside.

Melvyn King (1949-) and Simon Carter (1961), both artists from the Colchester Art Society, working with Firstsite’s Kirsty White curated the immensely impressive and incredibly extensive exhibition titled 'Life with Art: Benton End and the East Anglian School of painting and drawing' (11th December 2021 to 18th April 2022), along with support from ‘We Are The Minories’, and ‘Colchester Art Society’. More of this later.

A Preamble

East Anglia has long been recognised by artists as an area of supreme beauty. That quietly undulating, but not necessarily mountainous, land of Britain’s East Anglia has captured the vivid imagination of many artists over the centuries. They went there firstly to admire, then to paint, draw or sketch that gracefully intriguing land, its buildings, people, rivers, and sea.

In the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, painters such as Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), born in Sudbury, Suffolk, known for his painted landscape works such as ‘Cornard Wood’ (17480 at Great Cornard, Suffolk), took to brush and canvas, or sketching to capture the fascinating East Anglian visions before them. John Constable (1776-1837) was born in East Bergholt, a village on the River Stour, Suffolk, and has given his

name to the area now called ‘Constable country’ (for paintings such as ‘Dedham Vale’ (1802), ‘Flatford Mill’ (1810-11) as well as ‘Willy Lott's Cottage’ (1821) and many others.

John Crome (1768-182) was born in Norwich, and was one of the founders of the influential Norwich School of Painters (1803), along with Robert Ladbrooke (1768-1842). Crome painted throughout Norfolk, with canvases such as ‘Slate Quarries’ (1802–5) and ‘Mousehold Heath’, Norwich (1818–20). Thomas Hearne (17441817) the English landscape painter who created the grey wash over pencil - ‘The gateway at Erwarton Hall, Suffolk (1799), was among the many artists who captured Suffolk. So too was Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) who preserved images of East Anglia in his eightynine-page sketchbook ‘Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex’ (1824) and paintings such as ‘Aldborough, Suffolk’ (1826).

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, in London, the ‘New English Art Club’ (NEAC) was founded (1886) by a group of artists which included John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and Camile Pissarro (1830-1903). Other members included Sir George Clausen (1852-1944), Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947), Walter Sickert (1860-1942, and Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942). Later members included Paul Nash (1920s), brother to John (see below).

The NEAC was drawn to Walberswick in East Anglia’s Suffolk, probably because the British ‘Impressionist’ Philip Wilson Steer stayed at that picturesque, pastoral haven to paint its vast open skies and rural living during the 1880s and 90s. While visiting, he created paintings such as ‘The Beach at Walberswick’ (1890) and ‘Girls Running: Walberswick Pier’ (1894). Having a fifteenth century church, a mill, cottages and flocks of geese furthered romantic notions of Walberswick. That area also housed prominent artists such as the Scottish modernist architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) who painted a number of flower studies while at Walberswick including ‘Alder Catkins, Walberswick’ (1914), and ‘Black Bean, Walberswick’ (1915).

Born in 1878 at Mendham Mill, Mendham, Suffolk, Alfred Munnings (died 1959) attended the Norwich school of art while in an apprenticeship to a Norwich printer. After his apprenticeship, Munnings became a fulltime painter and, in 1919, bought Castle House, Dedham where he lived and had his studio. For a time Munnings was associated with the Cornish ‘Newlyn School’ art colony (extant from the 1880s until the early twentieth century, according to Wikipedia). Walter Langley (18521922) and Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947) were leading lights in that initial outing for the Newlyn School Art Colony. Despite being mainly known for his equine paintings, Munnings had painted numerous images of the surrounding countryside, like ‘Suffolk Landscape with Farm Buildings’, ‘A View of Boxted Mill’ and ‘A Barge On The Stour At Dedham’.

The Twentieth Century

British art in the early years of the twentieth century had drawn heavily on the innovations made in Europe (France, Italy and Germany especially). While even back in fifteenth century East Anglia, mediaeval nomadic ‘artists’ (painters of Christian iconography for churches etc.), had gained their inspiration from ‘Europe’. The work on ‘Temptation of St. Anthony’ one the screen at Tacolneston (outside Norwich, Norfolk) resembles the 1509 work of the Dutch artist, Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533).

The Bloomsbury Group (writers E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry as well as painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant) had taken their lead from School of Paris artists, and early 1900s European creatives, as did the NEAC before them.

After the First World War (1914-1918), and during the 1920s artist Edward Bawden (1903-1989) and his friend Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) frequently visited Great Bardfield, near Braintree, Essex, from London.

In 1932, two years after Edward Bawden had married Charlotte Epton,a potter, (1902-1970), and moved into Brick House, Great Bardfield. Eric Ravilious and his wife Eileen (Lucy ‘Tirzah’ Garwood, 1908-1951), an artist herself, stayed with the Bawdens, in Brick House, until they moved to Bank House, in Castle Hedingham

two years later (1934). Ravilious is known for works like 'Salt marsh.' (created in Tollesbury, near Maldon, Essex,1938), while Bawden created many pieces including ‘The road to Thaxted’, (a lino-cut, 1956) and “Ives farm” (1956).

Painter John Aldridge moved to Place House,Great Bardfield in 1933, along with Lucie Brown (nee Saunders). Aldridge painted images such as ‘Beslyn’s Pond’, ‘Home gardens’ and ‘The church across the moors’, (1949) capturing the Essex/Suffolk area around him.

On England’s Essex/Suffolk borderlands, Cedric Morris and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines, who both had success in America, France and Italy, moved out from ‘bohemian’ London and opened the ‘East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing’, in Dedham, Essex (1937). After a fire in 1939, which effectively gutted the art school building (captured in paintings by Joan Warburton ‘Burned school’ (1939), Cedric Morris ‘Gutted school, Dedham’ (1939) and David Carr’s ‘After the fire’ (1940) the school was relocated to Benton End, near Hadleigh, in Suffolk, where it survived for another forty years until Lett-Haines’ death, in 1978. By all accounts Munnings (mentioned above), found it hard to hide his glee at the initial destruction of that art school.

The Minories and Colchester School of Art

The building which became The Minories, was bought by Isaac Boggis in 1731. Since 1915, The Minories had been owned by the BensusanButt family (with Ruth Bensusan-Butt, being the sister-in-law of painter Lucien Pissarro, the son of French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro). Lucien Pissarro (1863–1944) who had been taught and trained by his father, and was in the habit of painting and drawing the gardens at the Minories when he visited, and painted ‘The Acacia Tree at the Minories, Colchester’ (1935) on more than one occasion..

The Minories house and gardens were later sold to the Victor Batte-Lay Trust, in 1956. Over time artists such as Edward Bawden, Leon Underwood, Eric Ravilious, brothers John and Paul Nash, Lucien Pissarro, Cedric Morris, Christopher Wood, Hugh Cronyn, Bill Brandt, Maggi Hambling, Roderic Barrett, Peter Coker, The Colchester Art School (founded in 1885), was originally called the ‘Albert school of art and science’, and was established in the Minories building at the end of the high street, Colchester. That educational establishment, in the 1930s, moved onto North Hill, and became known as the North East Essex Technical College and School of Art. In 1959, a new Technical College opened in Sheepen Way (the old road from the cattle market) and the School of Art became a part of that.

John Northcote Nash (mentioned above) was instrumental in founding the Colchester Art Society, which was formed in 1946 for the promotion of the visual arts by a group of artists based in the Colchester School of Art. Amongst the earliest members were John Nash, Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett-Haines, Henry Collins (1910–1994) who was a painter, designer and teacher, was born in Colchester, and married to the artist Joyce Pallot (1912–2004) also an artist. Collins studied at Colchester School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Roderic Barrett (1920-2000) was born in Colchester and studied at Central School of Art and Design (1936-1940) and succeeded Cedric Morris as the president of Colchester Arts Society from 1982 until his death in 2000. Nash,while living in Essex, taught at Colchester School of Art and conducted yearly plant illustration courses at Flatford Mill, East Bergholt, in Suffolk.

The Firstsite Exhibition

At Firstsite, Colchester, the 'Life with Art: Benton End and the East Anglian School of painting and drawing’ exhibition team had laid out many, and intricate, connections between some of the most renowned British twentieth century artists, the town of Colchester and its surrounding areas in Essex and Suffolk.

Intentionally, the exhibition eschewed modernist De Stijl/Bauhaus white cubes. Instead, a wealth of imagery was presented on intriguingly colour-coded walls which, so I was told, echoed hues from a Cedric Morris painting discovered at plantswoman Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens (Elmstead Market, near Colchester). The

exhibition rooms were laid out as if a visitor was entering a friend’s house, as opposed to a strictly chronological order.

One wall, by the entrance to the exhibition, drew visitors’ attention. This had an enlarged version of Harwich artist Melyvn King’s meticulously researched and hand-drawn original map of the artistic arena covered by the exhibition. This painstakingly teased out twentieth century delineation tied artists and places together across the region of England’s East Anglia, immediately adjacent to Colchester.

Through the exhibition rooms, art and artist links were revealed between famous names such as John Nash (1893-1977), and brother to early British surrealist Paul (1889-1946). John Nash was previously a war artist, and had bought a house in Wormingford, near Colchester. British Another leading twentieth century ‘Modernist’, the Pop artist Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi (19242005), had a house in Thorpe-le-soken, Essex, and his sculptures made in Ipswich, Suffolk. Another claim to fame is Lucian Freud (19222011) who was the grandson of psychoanalyst and (according to the late Prof. Frank Ciofi) a storyteller, Sigmund Freud. Lucien Freud was among the earliest students at the East Anglian School of painting and drawing, aged seventeen.

Suffolk born Maggi Hambling (1945-, Sudbury), first visited the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at the age of fifteen, and had studied at the Ipswich School of Art. The inimitable, Dublin born, Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is known to have had a studio in Wivenhoe, Essex, near to artists Richard ‘Dicky’ Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller. Richard Chopping became well known for his cover designs for Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, while Denis (Wirth-Miller) was a close friend of Francis Bacon’s and was chiefly the reason that Bacon, from 1948 onward, frequently visited that “mini-bohemia” which Wivenhoe was becoming (at least according to Jon Lys Turner).

It must come as no surprise that Wirth-Miller had visited that other jazzy hedonistic venue - Benton End, outside Handleigh, Suffolk, (in 1941) and later, again, with Chopping. Cedric Morris (1889-1982), was the co-founder of the East Anglian School of painting and drawing, at Benton End, along with Arthur Lett-Haines (1894-1978) and welcomed Wirth-Miller and Chopping later, as students.

I owe the majority of the above to several excellent books which I delved into for this piece, which I highly recommend (seen below), plus an enlightening conversation I had with Melvyn King and Simon Carter at the Firstsite café bar, for background. Thank you all who have set me on the path to discovering more about my home town and its connections to art (specifically modern).

Background books include;

A Lesson in Art & Life; The Colourful World of Cedric Morris & Arthur Lett-Haines, Hugh St.Claire, Pimpernel Press Ltd., 2019.

Artists at Walberswick: East Anglian Interludes 1880 - 2000, Richard Scott, Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2002.

Benton End Remembered: Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett-Haines and the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, Gwynneth Reynolds and Dianna Grace, Unicorn Press, reprinted 2021.

Cedric and Lett Friends and Lovers, Diana Grace and Andrew Campbell, Darsham Parochial Church Council, 2018.

Colchester Art Society: Complete Illustrated Catalogue 2016, Evelyne Bell, Colchester Art Society, 2016.

Contemporary & Post War British Art Sale, Gainsborough's House Sudbury, The John Hoyland Estate, 2017

Long live Great Bardfield: The autobiography of Tirzah Garwood, Persephone Books Ltd Bath, reprinted 202.

Outsiders: A book of garden friends, Ronald Blythe, Black Dog Books, 2008.

Tate Britain Companion to British Art, Richard Humphreys, Tate, 2001.

The Phaidon Companion to Art and Artists in the British Isles, Michael Jacobs and Malcom Warner, Phaidon, 1980.

The Visitor’s Book, Jon Lys Turner, Constable, paperback 2017.

And various WWW sites.