a private paradise
Lionel Bulmer ● Margaret Green
www.messums.com 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545
Lionel Bulmer NEAC, 1919–1992
Margaret Green NEAC, 1925–2003
a private paradise
2015
front cover: Lionel Bulmer 1. Christmas, 1958 oil on board 103 x 156 cms 401⁄2 x 611⁄2 ins Atelier no. 1040
Lionel Bulmer Margaret Green a private paradise
a private paradise by Ian Collins English Impressionism in general and the New English Art Club in particular were practically invented on the East Anglian coast at Walberswick and Southwold. And of all the artists who headed eastward in the distant wake of Philip Wilson Steer and his friends and followers of the 1880s, perhaps a pair of kindred painters who worked here for 30 successive summers, from 1960 to 1990, have come closest to the spirit of the pioneers and the place.
Margaret Green 2. Walking on the Sea Front, Seaton Carew oil on board 27 x 48 cms 10 3⁄4 x 183⁄4 ins Atelier no. 169
Margaret and Lional Bulmer with artists’ model
Margaret Green and Lionel Bulmer came from opposite ends of the country and in other senses grew up poles apart. She was the daughter of a Teeside steelworker, he was the son of a London architect. But both had the great good fortune to find their creative talents, most notably in draughtsmanship, nurtured at home from the start. Margaret was still a promising secondary school pupil when Lionel was drafted into the war. They met at the Royal College of Art when it had been relocated by the bombing of London to the Lake District. Here in the magical landscape of the Romantic poets Margaret and Lionel fell (instantly, totally, permanently) in love.
Lionel Bulmer 3. Swans by the Bandstand, 1952 pen and wash 35 x 45 cms 13 3⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 ins Atelier no. 1120L
Margaret Green carried off hearts and prizes at the RCA immediately after the war’s end, but for her there was only ever one possible partner once she had set eyes on him. Happily he returned the feeling in full. They felt no need of marriage – though that formal seal would finally be set, in 1991, when Lionel was dying – as from the outset they simply shared everything. Despite the remaining contrasts in their characters, their friends came to refer to them as a single entity – MargaretandLionel.
Lionel Bulmer 4. The Railway Station
pen and wash 35 x 45 cms 13 3⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 ins Atelier no. 1091
It is very rare for two artists to live and work together in perfect harmony. One normally smothers the creativity of the other, who has to tend to the chores and the children. The names of the giftedbut-forgotten wives of celebrated male artists are too many to mention (but Mrs Eric Ravilious, Mrs John Nash and Mrs Cecil Collins are but three, albeit from an older generation, whose lives overlapped with those of Margaret and Lionel and who could themselves have had brilliant careers). It may be just possible for the spouse of a famous painter to have a studio in the corner of a large house, but MargaretandLionel worked happily from corners of the same small table. For they followed the Royal
Lionel Bulmer 5. Parking in the Forecourt, 1952 pen and wash 35 x 46 cms 133⁄4 x 18 1⁄8 ins Atelier no. 1120M
College back to its roots in South Kensington, and were based in a succession of Chelsea bedsits as they both won part-time teaching posts to earn the precious time for their own painting. Soon stalwarts of the New English Art Club – the group co-founded by Philip Wilson Steer and, despite its name, championing French-style painting – MargaretandLionel came to capture the spirit of the post-war age in their exquisite pictures. But first their horizons were broadened when a £160 travelling scholarship allowed a yearlong tour of France and Ireland for two. A preponderance of grey tonal harmonies in their emerging work suited a time of austerity and rationing, but a period when human hopes have never been higher. Pools of colour spread – from the glow of “New Look” clothes in shop windows, or the gleam of fabric or objects in sparse domestic interiors, or bright figures in icy parks – to cover the entire scene in the vast exuberance of the 1951 Festival of Britain. The partner painters toured the South Bank site with great delight and caught the electric air of the moment, after which things in this country would never be the same again. But their hearts really lay beyond the capital, since they always longed to paint the sea. Margaret had in fact found her artistic feet in early visits to the small wind-blown resort of Seaton Carew, then within a few miles of her home and now part of the borough of Hartlepool. This former fishing village had become a fashionable Edwardian watering hole for the industrialists of Middlesborough before returning to very hard times. Sea coal was harvested along a shoreline which, from 1930, included the rotting hulk of the wrecked Danish schooner, ‘Doris’ – its rounded timbers raised from the sand at low tide like whale ribs. In 1922 and again in 1949 there was a huge conflagration in a wood yard of Scandinavian
Lionel Bulmer 6. The Thames at Chelsea pen and wash 26 x 45 cms 101⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 ins Atelier no. 1116G
Lionel Bulmer 7. Riverside Walk, Albert Embankment
pen, wash and watercolour 35 x 45 cms 133⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 ins Atelier no. 1110B
timber destined for pit props in the mines of County Durham. All of this history Margaret embraced in her evocative images of the first post-war holidays as hard-working north-easterners played close to home. For several years of their partnership the two artists worked on the Sussex coast at Littlehampton, based in a disused attic above a boatshed. Their resulting images all range from late spring to early autumn since the unheated attic was uninhabitable in winter even for such a hardy pair.
In the late 1950s they settled on West Suffolk as a permanent rural base, since it was relatively accessible to London and relatively affordable £850 securing a decrepit medieval hall house in a wilderness of weeds running down to the River Rat near Stowmarket. Here they slowly and painstakingly created a private paradise, a very special home and garden which they have shared with us via scores of immaculate paintings. Margaret reveals corners of their domestic haven in gem-like images of mantelpieces, windowsills and tabletops adorned with flowers or prized junk-shop finds. Lionel gives us the bigger picture in studies of intricate patterning of rug or curtain against whitewashed walls.
Lionel Bulmer 8. Beach Scene, Aldeburgh grey wash 36 x 46 cms 141⁄8 x 181⁄8 ins Atelier no. 1120/13
Lionel Bulmer 9. Playtime on the Beach, 1973
coloured inks on paper 16 x 21 cms 61⁄2 x 81⁄4 ins Atelier no. 1171a
And in those pictures of Southwold and Walberswick – for which they trundled across Suffolk for countless visits – two very private and totally united painters rather uncharacteristically chose to work apart, Margaret with her back to a breakwater and Lionel on the open beach with a barricade of deckchairs and windbreaks to keep prying eyes at bay. Now the differences between them became dramatic since they decided that their lives had become so entwined that their paintings were growing indistinguishable, so one of them must make a radical break. Naturally the one to do this was the gallant Lionel. He had long loved the Philip Wilson Steer painting of Knucklebones in Ipswich’s Christchurch Mansion and now this English experiment in Pointillism prompted an entirely new career. The first luscious fruits of a belated East Anglian tribute to Seurat were shown in London’s prestigious New Art Centre. Waves of brilliant green and blue and yellow – signifying dunes, sea, sky, beach and harbour – were splashed with the motifs of vividly coloured and patterned materials in a vibrant and valiant impression of east coast summer holidays.
Lionel Bulmer 10. The Level Crossing pen and wash 25 x 36 cms 97⁄8 x 14 ins Atelier no. 1169
Lionel Bulmer died in February 1992. Margaret lingered on like a beautiful wraith for a further eleven years, but without her partner she was unable to produce another picture. Perhaps every painting by these life-long lovers should be signed MargaretandLionel. Ian Collins *Ian Collins is a writer and curator. His award-winning book Water Marks: Art in East Anglia includes a chapter on Margaret Green and Lionel Bulmer.
Lionel Bulmer 11. Gossiping on the Beach, Isle of Wight, 1952 pen and wash 35 x 45 cms 13 3⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 ins Atelier no. 1120K
Lionel Bulmer 12. Festival Gardens I oil on canvased board 25 x 33 cms 97⁄8 x 13 ins Atelier no. 115
Lionel Bulmer 13. A Collage of Drawings
oil on board 28 x 39 cms 11 x 15 3⁄8 ins Atelier no. 815
Lionel Bulmer 14. Pavilion at the Festival of Britain, 1951 oil on canvassed panel 53 x 41 cms 20 7⁄8 x 161⁄8 ins Atelier no. 722
Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green: Bright Confident Mornings On 8 May 1945, London turned the lights back on. Floodlights shone on St Paul’s and on Nelson’s Column, while Leicester Square and Piccadilly came alive as neon signs flashed like tropical fish through the formerly blacked-out evenings. Londoners now strolled about safely at night, free to stop and be entranced by the glow of newly stocked shop windows. Nevertheless, for most, daily life remained a struggle. Apart from the massive building reconstruction that was still needed to rehouse thousands, rationing was actually increased, and heat remained scarce. After visiting postwar London, the American literary critic Edward Wilson wrote: “How empty, how sickish, how senseless everything suddenly seems the moment the war is over! We are left flat with impoverished and humiliated life that the drive against the enemy kept our minds off ”. And a contemporary entry from Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton’s diary despondently read: “Never bright confident morning again”. When Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green followed the RCA’s return to Chelsea, they lived and painted the realities of this recovery period, which lasted far longer in Britain than in any other Allied country. Their work captured everyday life in London as a series of modest, self-contained victories, and for all the dim, shabby sense of making do, there is an even stronger sense of what endured: hope.
overleaf: Lionel Bulmer 15. The May Picnic oil on board 92 x 137 cms 36 x 54 ins Atelier no. 1025 Margaret Green 16. In the Park oil on board 64 x 71 cms 25 x 28 ins Atelier no. 241
Earlier, at Seaton Carew, near her native Hartlepool, Margaret had often painted holiday goers half-hidden in the mist and rain. After she and Lionel moved to Chelsea, she painted Londoners camouflaged amid leafy squares or Christmas decorations, as if protected from the larger world. Later still, when they moved to Stowmarket, her minimalist interiors expressed how society is based on countless small, personal histories, and is in turn altered by any individual’s loss or displacement. Margaret was never as prolific nor as widely exhibited as Lionel, although her works hung alongside his in 1951 at the Leicester Galleries, where her painting The Beach, Ventnor was singled out by The Times as “a work of exceptional charm”. She also exhibited annually at the RA and NEAC. Much of the quiet poetry of her work can be summed up by a lovely (if un-credited) insight from her obituary in The Telegraph: “… if you want to know what it was really like to be an art student in that bleak and menacing post-war world, her densely-toned, claustrophobic interiors, so intimate and richly layered in their tender observation as to invite comparison with Vuillard, give you as good an idea as you could wish for”. Finally, in his wrap-up of the 1955 NEAC exhibition Frederick Laws noted the renewed interest in park-life themes and called Margaret “the most impressive of the New English park painters”. But, as deeply admired as she was, both as an artist and as a teacher, Margaret never achieved the same level of recognition as Lionel. Arguably, she abnegated her career for the sake of his, but it is doubtful she would have seen it that way. Their relationship was first and foremost a partnership of equals. Ken Howard RA, who knew them, once said: “What I think is most interesting about [them] as a couple, and as artists, is that they were totally uncompetitive. They
Lionel Bulmer 17. New Hats, 1957 oil on board 76 x 102 cms 297⁄8 x 401⁄8 ins signed Atelier no. 975
were so devoted to each other and each other’s work that when Maggie was first offered a solo show, she refused until Lionel had the chance as well.” Certainly, neither painter asserted themselves too noisily at the 1953 London Group exhibition, where Neville Wallis noted that among works by Elizabeth Frink and Lynn Chadwick, Lionel’s “warm interiors and Margaret [Green’s] delicately perceptive Festival Gardens may easily be overlooked”. However, reviewing the 1954 autumn NEAC show, John Berger praised their work as exceptional. And there, possibly, lies the rub. Many of these early reviews noted their contributions in tandem, even while praising them discretely (e.g. the frisson of melancholy in Margaret’s garden squares, Lionel’s eye for how teen fashions reflected deeper changes in youth culture, etc.). Indeed, in reviewing ‘Seven Young British Painters’ (1956, South London Art Gallery), The Times assessed various works by Lionel and Margaret almost as if they were by one artist. Eventually, the symbiosis that fuelled their relationship stymied independent criticism of their work, so much so that, as Ian Collins observed: “… their pictures had by a certain point become indistinguishable even to themselves. They discussed the problem and agreed that Lionel should make a break. Until then their paintings had tended to place gem-like patches in muted and monochrome settings; now the jewel effect was expanded to cover the whole picture as Lionel reworked the Pointillism of Seurat to his own design. It was a brilliant technique for catching kaleidoscopic seaside summer colour (strips of striped canvas, bright bathing costumes, parasols and kites against azure skies, golden sand and sparkling shingle). It was also extremely brave”.
Lionel Bulmer 18. Night Windows oil on board 92 x 122 cms 36 x 48 ins Atelier no. 1012
From the late 1950s they began to paint Sussex and East Anglia on weekend breaks from London, and Lionel first exhibited his shift towards colourdrenched pointillism around 1972, when he and Margaret showed views of Walberswick and the Blyth Estuary at the NEAC and the RA Summer Exhibition. Lionel now used pinpoint strokes of lilac, emerald green and lemon yellow, while Margaret retained her primary palette and contained forms. Undoubtedly, Philip Wilson Steer’s Impressionism inspired Lionel’s dramatically decorative, atmospheric style, but the success of his pastiche pointillism depended on a strong sense of line and structure, which he had first learned in his father’s architectural studio. In fact, his command of draughtsmanship was so ingrained that, when he taught at Kingston, he, Reginald Brill and Wilfred Fairclough were collectively known as “The Precision Men”. Both Margaret and Lionel loved painting variations of studio corners and sitting-room interiors which, in their focus on objects, colour and pattern, evoke the post-impressionistic detours of Bonnard or Vuillard. Two works by Margaret, In the Doorway and Interior, Connecting Doorways, particularly recall how Bonnard used figures to suggest the elusive, mixed emotions of human contact. Lionel could manipulate pattern to enfold or even camouflage discrete forms, and painted interiors and still lifes that convey a sense of comfort and order he knew (at least partly) to be an illusion. Some pictures simply reflect his delight in motifs and symmetry, like Quatrefoil and Rose and The White Pitcher. But in other more intricate compositions, like Elizabethans and Patterned Interior, a sense of order appears to push through the chaos. A second look at several works – from his earlier high-street crowds to lone figures by a harbour wall, or the somewhat alienated figures that emerge on shingled beaches and baroque gardens – reveal
Lionel Bulmer 19. Green Dining Room oil on board 92 x 137 cms 36 x 54 ins Atelier no. 1018
Lionel’s eye for the rare within the everyday. This quiet sense of the uncanny is particularly strong in Looking Out and Après le Bain, where he introduced a strange dark-eyed girl, whom one could easily read as an avatar for Margaret. As Ian Collins has beautifully described, Lionel and Margaret’s life was for the most part a happy nation of two, and their work illustrates this better than any analysis given here. However, I would point out something I believe their work consistently shared, despite Lionel’s stylistic shift: a sincere belief in the importance of memory. While Britain steadily rebuilt itself, it also reappraised many of its societal norms, mostly with an eye towards the greater good. However, many Britons found these changes unsettling and this unease stretched across class lines. Margaret continued to paint intimate studies and anonymous holidaymakers with equal sensitivity and lucidity. But in his work, Lionel appeared to pursue something slightly different. Several of his electrically patterned interiors and baroque gardens have a sense of the hidden or the unexpected; and some of his best paintings actually seem to invite a game of hideand-seek that both entices and thwarts our attempts to completely enter into them. In this respect, his paintings could be read as memory palaces, a method of remembering specific experiences or objects by visualising them within an unrelated context. Perhaps this is one reason why he repeatedly painted lace curtains, not just for their obvious design potential, but for what lace curtains usually preserve: personal privacy. And what, after all, is more personal than our relationship to the past? Andrea Gates Director of Messum’s
Lionel Bulmer 20. Quatrefoil and Rose oil on board 92 x 122 cms 36 x 48 ins Atelier no. 1013
Margaret Green 21. Postwar Holiday, Seaton Carew Beach, near Hartlepool oil on canvas 90 x 120 cms 353⁄8 x 471⁄4 ins
Lionel Bulmer 22. On the Dunes oil on canvas 122 x 122 cms 48 x 48 ins
Margaret Green 23. The Reader oil on board 76 x 92 cms 30 x 36 ins Atelier no. 321
Lionel Bulmer 24. The Unmade Bed pen and ink 31 x 34 cms 121⁄4 x 133⁄8 ins Atelier no. 1174 Margaret Green 25. Sleeping watercolour 36 x 51 cms 14 x 20 ins Atelier no. 226 Lionel Bulmer 26. Early Morning, Walking Past the Fruit Cage oil on canvassed board 50 x 61 cms 195⁄8 x 24 ins Atelier no. 028
Margaret Green 27. Lionel Seated by the Lamp oil on board 36 x 34 cms 141⁄4 x 133 ⁄8 ins Atelier no. 186 Margaret Green 28. Sat next to the Christmas Tree oil on board 63 x 29 cms 24 3⁄4 x 111⁄4 ins Atelier no. 211 Lionel Bulmer 29. Autumnal Dusk oil on board 68 x 97 cms 263⁄4 x 381⁄4 ins signed lower right Atelier no. 984
Lionel Bulmer 30. The Wave gouache 25 x 39 cms 93⁄4 x 151⁄2 ins Atelier no. 839 Lionel Bulmer 31. Sutton’s Fish gouache 27 x 39 cms 101⁄2 x 151⁄2 ins Atelier no. 56 Lionel Bulmer 32. Rose Cottage, 1958
gouache 24 x 35 cms 91⁄2 x 133⁄4 ins signed and dated lower left Atelier no. 883
Lionel Bulmer 33. Long Garden, the River Bank oil on board 62 x 33 cms 241⁄2 x 13 ins Atelier no. 165 bottom left: Lionel Bulmer 34. Beneath the Harbour Wall, Littlehampton oil on canvassed board 28 x 10 cms 11 x 37⁄8 ins Atelier no. 1042 bottom right: Lionel Bulmer 35. Beneath the Harbour Wall, Littlehampton oil on canvassed board 28 x 10 cms 11 x 37⁄8 ins Atelier no. 1043
Lionel Bulmer 36. The Artist's Studio oil on canvassed panel 34 x 25 cms 133⁄8 x 97⁄8 ins Atelier no. 428 Margaret Green 37. In the Countryside oil on board 20 x 76 cms 8 x 30 ins Atelier no. 212
Lionel Bulmer 38. Sea Wall and Dunes oil on canvassed panel 31 x 47 cms 121⁄4 x 181⁄2 ins Atelier no. 630 Lionel Bulmer 39. Estuary Images oil on board 31 x 76 cms 12 x 30 ins Atelier no. 968 Margaret Green 40. In the Doorway oil on board 61 x 51 cms 24 x 20 ins Atelier no. 221
Margaret Green 41. Connecting Doorways oil on board 122 x 53 cms 48 x 21 ins Atelier no. 257 Margaret Green 42. Home in Winter, Stowmarket oil on board 76 x 102 cms 30 x 40 ins Atelier no. 328
Lionel Bulmer 43. Lace Reflections oil on board 32 x 47 cms 121â „2 x 181â „2 ins Atelier no. 602 Margaret Green 44. The Garden in Winter, Stowmarket oil on board 76 x 102 cms 30 x 40 ins signed lower right Atelier no. 330
Lionel Bulmer 45. Looking Out oil on board 41 x 51 cms 16 x 20 ins signed lower right Atelier no. 669 Lionel Bulmer 46. The White Pitcher oil on board 41 x 51 cms 16 x 20 ins Atelier no. 737
Lionel Bulmer 47. Apres le Bain oil on board 36 x 52 cms 14 x 201⁄2 ins Atelier no. 883 Lionel Bulmer 48. Patterned Curtains
oil on canvassed board 41 x 51 cms 161⁄8 x 201⁄8 ins Atelier no. 734
Lionel Bulmer 49 Elizabethans oil on board 76 x 102 cms 297â „8 x 401â „8 ins signed Atelier no. 49
Lionel Bulmer 50. Patterned Interior oil on canvas 92 x 137 cms 36 x 54 ins Atelier no. 1028
Lionel Bulmer 51. The Terrace oil on canvas 122 x 122 cms 48 x 48 ins signed lower right Atelier no. 1030
Lionel Bulmer 52. The Hesperides oil on board 107 x 107 cms 42 x 42 ins Atelier no. 991
Lionel Bulmer 53. In the Fields, Southwold oil on board 51 x 41 cms 20 x 16 ins Atelier no. 660 Lionel Bulmer 54. Across the Dunes oil on board 51 x 41 cms 20 x 16 ins Atelier no. 166
Margaret Green 55. Southwold Harbour, River Blyth I oil on canvas 76 x 102 cms 297⁄8 x 401⁄8 ins
Lionel Bulmer 56. On the Beach oil on board 51 x 41 cms 20 x 16 ins Atelier no. 705 Lionel Bulmer 57. Windbreaks on the Beach oil on linen, laid down on board 51 x 61 cms 20 x 24 ins
Lionel Bulmer 58. On the Green oil on canvas 51 x 41 cms 20 x 16 ins Atelier no. 172 Margaret Green 59. The Deckchair oil on linen, laid down on board 50 x 76 cms 193â „4 x 30 ins signed lower right
Margaret Green 60. Southwold Harbour, River Blyth II oil on board 35 x 48 cms 133⁄4 x 183⁄4 ins Atelier no. 180 Margaret Green 61. Walberswick Ferry oil on board 39 x 49 cms 153⁄8 x 191⁄4 ins signed lower right
Lionel Bulmer 62. High Water oil on board 41 x 51 cms 16 x 20 ins Atelier no. 704 Lionel Bulmer 63. Groins, Southwold oil on board 41 x 51 cms 16 x 20 ins signed lower right Atelier no. 155
CDV
ISBN 978-1-908486-97-4 Publication No: CDV Published by David Messum Fine Art Š David Messum Fine Art
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