Before and After Everest, the Art of Howard Somervell
Before and After Everest
The Art of Howard Somervell
Foreword
This exhibition has come to fruition following several years of planning and discussions among likeminded individuals who all share the same conviction that Howard Somervell is an underrated artist and that what is overdue is a small but first-rate curated exhibition of selected pictures to celebrate his achievements as a landscape painter. The date for this exhibition has been planned to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Somervell’s death. In the intervening years of its develop-ment a number of events have conspired to shape and progress the original concept. Firstly there have been at least five exhibitions and events to celebrate the centenary of the 1924 Everest expedition in which Somervell played a key part. Secondly, an important sale of Somervell’s paintings, photographs and sketchbooks took place in 2021 at which a number of important historical items came to light; appearing on the open market for the first time. Undoubtedly, the star of this auction was a 1922 Everest from Rongbuk oil painting that was previously believed to be lost and which has now been restored to full and vibrant life. Also in the sale was a group of twelve large format photographs of Everest, Nanga Parbat and a group of five sketchbooks filled by Somervell when he was a field surgeon during WW1. These sketchbooks reveal how Sir William Rothenstein, who as an official war artist was billeted for a time with Somervell, helped to hone and develop his composition and drawing technique. It has even been possible to identify some of the locations where the two artists sketched together.
Recent research, undertaken by Dr David Seddon, foremost expert on the art of TH Somervell, has resulted in further discoveries, and work is ongoing. A comprehensive new biography, written by Graham Hoyland and published by The History Press in May 2025 will greatly add to our knowledge of this extraordinary man. It is our hope that Somervell’s art will once again stand alone and be valued in its own right, as it was in the past by Roerich and Rothenstein, and be seen as integral to the path of mid-twentieth century British landscape painting. Somervell is far from being just a topographer of the Himalaya and the Alps. The limited palette and close tonality of his oil technique combine to create a ‘softmodernist’ language in landscape paintings that are, in a way, as quintessentially English and of their period as the landscapes of John Nash or the Art Deco inspired GWR Railway posters of the 1930s.
Howard Somervell was, as you will read here, a polymath, a man of remarkably broad-ranging talents; he was also a man of strong faith and great humility who gave away some of his best work to friends. His art production was prodigious: according to David Seddon it amounts to many hundreds or even thousands of works – if one includes all the pastels and watercolours. Our wish is that this exhibition will highlight the very best of this heroic man’s achievements as a hitherto unsung unofficial war artist and landscape painter of distinction.
Simon Pierse
Before and After Everest, the Art of Howard Somervell
Howard Somervell was born in Kendal in 1890 and is best known for his role as a mountaineer who was one of the leading climbers on the 1922 and 1924 British expeditions to Everest. He was a surgeon, who devoted the rest of his working life to the people of South India as a medical missionary. He was also an acclaimed artist, especially of mountain scenes and other landscapes. He carried a sketchbook almost everywhere he went, and would later use the sketches as a basis for his oil paintings. Many of his paintings are of mountains and are based on sketches he made on his climbing expeditions to Everest, other Himalayan mountains and the Alps. He developed his art practice over many years, particularly while serving as a surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corp. on the Western Front in 1916-18, during which time he was able to go out sketching with William Rothenstein, who had a strong influence on his technique. After he resigned from the RAMC in 1920, Somervell spent the summer months climbing in the Alps, and then went to Scotland, where, with Graham Wilson he traversed the Cuillin Ridge in Skye. It was these climbing exploits that established his mountaineering reputation, resulting in him being selected for the 1922 Everest expedition. Travels in India following this expedition led to his decision to spend his working life helping the poor at Neyyoor Hospital in what is now Tamil Nadu. After he retired to the Lake District, he painted prolifically in the studio of his home in Ambleside, but he also travelled to many parts of the world.
The Art of Howard Somervell (Abridged and adapted from David Seddon’s ‘Something the Artist Wishes to Say’)1
As a boy, Howard Somervell was encouraged to sketch by his father, William Henry Somervell (1860-1934), a competent watercolourist and a collector of modern art. A studio photograph exists of Somervell, aged six or seven, with paint tray in hand. He was soon painting local scenes in Kendal and as an undergraduate exhibited at the Cambridge Drawing Society in 1910.
THE FIGHT FOR EVEREST
As well as being a leading member of the 1922 and 1924 expeditions to Everest, Somervell was, as an artist, actively engaged in recording the mountain landscape, and the high plains of Tibet through which the expedition passed on the approach to Everest. Edward F. Norton (1884-1954) who led the 1924 expedition and had painted on both, published the classic The Fight for Everest, 1924 the following year. The book contains colour reproductions of eight of Somervell's paintings (figs. 1 & 2).2 The paintings themselves were shown the following year at the Redfern Gallery in April 1926 as part of an exhibition arranged by Somervell’s father and opened by William Rothenstein, Principal at the Royal College of Art, who also wrote an introduction to the catalogue. The paintings, mostly watercolours and pastels, included two views of Everest itself as well as Gaurisankar, Rongshar Chu, Forest above Sedongchen, The View from Lingga at 5.30am, A Valley in Sikkim and Climbers Camp at 26,000 feet. Only the last was not completed on the spot. Somervell’s brother Leslie purchased Kampa Dzong Fortress, and an aunt, Rachel Dora Howard, bought A Valley in Sikkim, a simple pencil and watercolour sketch on off-white paper, dated 1922. Kampa Dzong Fortress shows a scene from the hillside just behind the fortress looking south across the plains of Tibet (fig. 2). The hills of north Sikkim are in the distance. There is a photograph in Tilman's Mount Everest 1938 taken from a comparable position. A Valley in Sikkim shows dense monsoon clouds and was probably painted in July 1922 when Somervell returned through Sikkim after the end of the Everest expedition.
Somervell painted three views of Kampa Dzong during the 1922 expedition, Kampa Dzong (morning and afternoon versions) and Kampa Dzong, the Gateway of the Fort, all exhibited at the Alpine Club in 1923. There were to be further paintings of Kampa Dzong, an oil exhibited at the Alpine Club in 1954 and two exhibited, also at the club, possibly in 1974. There are several watercolours of Shekar Dzong, including The Holy of Holies, Shekar Monastery and Shekar Dzong held by the Alpine Club, dated 1922, a view of the interior of the monastery.
1 Seddon, DJ, ‘Something the Artist Wishes to Say’, Alpine Journal, Vol. 110, No. 354, pp.217-230
2 Everest from Base Camp, 1922 (frontispiece); Kinchenjhau from Kampa Dzong; Chomulhari from the West; From Lingga, Looking West – Evening during Monsoon; Sunset on the Snows of Cho Rapsang; Kampa Dzong Fortress, A Typical Camp in the Plains of Tibet; Gyachung Kang from Gyachung Chu.
There is another Shekar Dzong (1924, private collection) that shows the fortress from the valley floor.
1. (left) Mount Everest from Base Camp 1922, Somervell’s painting as it appears as the frontispiece in Norton’s The Fight for Everest, 1924, published by Edward Arnold in 1925
2. (right) Kampa Dzong Fortress, watercolour and gouache. This painting is reproduced in an unfinished state in The Fight for Everest, 1924
Over his lifetime, Somervell painted many hundreds if not thousands of paintings. Of some 540 titles that have been identified, 201 are of the Himalaya or Tibet. Of these, 125 date or relate to the 1922 or 1924 expeditions although there are certainly another 30 or so, exhibited at the Redfern Gallery in 1926, the where-abouts of which remain unknown. During the Everest years, Somervell seems to have been more active in 1922 than in 1924, especially between late March and late July 1922 which was, perhaps, his most prolific period. Of the rest, there are 54 paintings of India, 86 of the Alps and other mountain ranges, 86 of the Lake District, 23 of Scotland and Wales, and others from all over the world. He exhibited at the New English Art Club (NEAC) in 1917 and again in 1921. 3 Another painting dating from his war service, The Somme Valley, was exhibited in 1921 at the Lake Artists Society (LAS). Also exhibited at LAS in 1921 was The Matterhorn from Rothorn.4 These figures can only be a guide to his total output.
3 Ypres 1917, Stone Quarry, Pas de Calais; Dent Blanche (1921) Dictionary of Exhibitors at the New English Art Club, Hilmaston Manor Press, 2002.
4 He was to paint at least another nine views of the Matterhorn, the last, an oil, dated 1969.
TECHNIQUE AND INFLUENCE
A great source of influence on Somervell was the Russian painter, explorer and mystic Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947). Somervell described him as '...the greatest mountain painter alive...'. Roerich travelled through India and North America in the 1920s before settling in Kulu where Somervell stayed at his house for a few days in September 1944. Somervell wrote: ‘Did several rough sketches, no time for paint. The most glorious day, views, shapes and colours of mountains etc’.
Some of Roerich's paintings are similar in style to those of Somervell, although Roerich developed mysticism in his work while Somervell did not.5 Other influences included Somervell’s father, Lakeland artists such as Alfred Heaton Cooper (1863-1929) and his son William (1903-1995) and also Edward F. Norton.6
5 J Decter, Nicholas Roerich: The Life and Art of a Russian Master, London 1989.
6 M P Ward, 'The Everest Sketches of Lt Col EF Norton', AJ 98, 1993, 82.
3. Howard Somervell at Kampa Dzong in 1922. Photograph by George Leigh Mallory
Somervell wrote that the aspiring mountain artist must first draw his mountain, simplifying detail, 'cubifying' as he put it. In Assault on Everest, 1922, he described the colour and atmosphere of Tibet
The air in Tibet is clear to an extent unimagined by a European, clearer even than the air of an Alpine winter. So peaks and ridges 30 or 40 miles away are often almost in the same visual plane as the foreground of the landscape. …. It is this lack of atmosphere which makes pictorial representation of these Tibetan scenes so very difficult; the pictures I made on the course of the Expedition have all had one criticism from many different people – “there is no atmosphere.” Many as are the demerits of these pictures, this is the one merit they have; and if they had an “atmosphere” they would cease to be truthful.
In After Everest he concluded: 'People at home will say my sketches are hard, lacking poetry or mystery but that is just where they are true records of this extraordinary clarity.'
4 Nicholas Roerich, Kangchenjunga, 1944, tempera and oil on canvas
5 Study of mountains, pencil, sketchbook study
SKETCHES AND WATERCOLOURS
Somervell was a prolific watercolourist and sketcher in pastel. Abbot Hall Gallery has 13 unframed watercolours, including one of his earliest mountain pictures, Mountain, dated 1913, a view of the Peuterey ridge of Mont Blanc. Five of the watercolours date from 1922 or 1924. Rain over Tibetan Foothills and Everest Base Camp are both dated 1922. Everest Base Camp is in fact a camp scene with figures at Kampa Dzong. There are two views of Tinki Dzong: Tinki, dated 1922 with a reflection of the Dzong in an adjacent lake and a chorten in the foreground and another, also Tinki, dated both 1922 and 1924.7 Of later works there are Gorge through Himalayas to East of Nanda Kot (1926) and Everest, Lhotse and Makalu from Sandak[phu] (1943), a view from the Singalila ridge with the Kanshung face of Everest glimpsed beyond Makalu.
Many of Somervell's watercolours are painted on brown Kraft paper (fig. 6).8 As early as 1913, he sometimes used a French laid paper made by Michallet and he also favoured Ingres
7 There is a photograph of Tinki Dzong in Howard-Bury's Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance 1921 taken from almost exactly the same place as the first of these paintings. See Charles Howard-Bury, Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance, 1921, (London: Arnold &Co.), 1922.
8 Kraft paper is a kind of brown paper made through a special process invented in Prussia in the late nineteenth century. The name derives from the German word for ‘strength’ but because it is made from wood pulp, Kraft paper can darken overtime; something that is observable in many of Somervell’s watercolours.
paper.9 Watercolour was his favoured medium in Tibet, the Himalaya and India. He often used bodycolour; that is watercolour mixed with gouache, in preference to pure watercolour and also used pastel, either alone or in conjunction with watercolour. This semi-opaque technique helped him when transcribing his watercolour sketches into oil paintings in the studio.
In a note to his 1936 exhibition, Somervell wrote that a picture must 'communicate something the artist wishes to say' as well as being 'in some measure descriptive of its subject'. Although Somervell sold many paintings over his lifetime, he might not be regarded as a ‘professional’ artist in the strict sense of the word. But freedom from financial considerations allowed him to develop his style as he wished. Many regard his paintings of the great Himalayan peaks and Tibet as a unique record, and an important part of the heritage of the history of mountain art. Probably no other artist applied a personal form of ‘cubism’ to the high mountains in such a consistent and authoritative way as Somervell, especially in his later works, and he deserves more recognition as an artist in his own right.
9 Georges Seurat favoured this paper and used it for his drawings in Conté crayon
6. Laluni Jot, 19770 ft. Undated but probably 1944, watercolour on Kraft paper
EVEREST AND THE HIMALAYA
Somervell exhibited nine paintings of the 1922 Everest expedition at the Alpine Club (AC) in December that year in an exhibition mainly devoted to ET Compton who had died in 1921.10 These were exhibited again in January 1923 when the Mount Everest Committee mounted a major exhibition of 204 photographs, including 12 by Somervell, and 57 of his paintings. The most expensive of these was Mount Everest's Western Shoulder at £50.10s but most were priced at 12 guineas or less. Surprisingly, only five are of Everest itself. Twelve of the paintings relate to Somervell's foray into Sikkim following the expedition, including Fluted Peak, Sikkim; Jonsong Peak and Siniolchum.
When the 1922 Everest expedition arrived at their base camp, Somervell assisted with the organisation of stores for transport to higher camps whilst others prospected the route. He was impressed by the outline of Everest and was struck by the cubist appearance of the northern aspect of the mountain
Its [Everest’s] outline is stately rather than fantastic, and its dignity is the solid dignity of Egyptian buildings …’ and ‘Everest is, on its northern aspect, rather a cubist mountain, and to one who, like myself, is of modern tendency in artistic appreciation, it offered constant satisfaction as a subject for numerous sketches.
In his autobiography, After Everest, Somervell recorded painting six oils and ten watercolours of the view of Everest from the Rongbuk Valley. These were all painted in the week or so after the expedition arrived at their base camp on 1 May 1922. Everest from Rongbuk (fig. 7) shows the camp sited beneath the moraines of the Rongbuk Glacier, the north east ridge of
10 The Alpine Club has 30 paintings by Somervell. Of these, 23 date from the Everest expeditions, the majority from 1922.
7 Everest from Rongbuk, 1922, oil on hessian
the summit, and the famous Yellow Band of marble and quartzite rock below the summit. Also depicted are what is now known as the Norton couloir to the left of the summit and possibly also some of the rock pinnacles of the north east ridge. Everest from Rongbuk was in Somervell’s personal collection at the time of his death and must have been his favourite painting of this view. His widow subsequently exhibited it in 1976 and again in 1979 when Noel Odell was photographed inspecting the picture. It remained with the Somervell family for almost 100 years until sold at auction in 2021.
Somervell painted another, larger oil, Everest from Rongbuk, possibly from the same piece of canvas.11 A cropped colour reproduction of this painting serves as the frontispiece to the first edition of After Everest (fig. 8). The tents of base camp can be seen amongst the terminal moraines of the Rongbuk glacier. Changtse (North Peak, 7543m) is seen upper left and the summit of Everest itself is upper centre. Although undated, this picture is almost identical to Everest from Rongbuk (fig. 6) which is signed and dated 1922.
At the end of the expedition in June 1922, Somervell sent his father a consignment of paintings of the expedition’s adventures before embarking on his travels through Sikkim and India. Three of the six oils are extant, but all the watercolours are lost.
11 Now in a private collection.
8 Everest from the Base Camp (cropped), frontispiece to the first edition of Somervell’s autobiography After Everest (1936)
A few days before his summit attempt on 21 May 1922, Somervell walked from Camp III to the Rapiu La. Two paintings were inspired by the view of the east (Kangshung) face of Everest from this high col (fig. 9). He later wrote
Whatever may be the route by which the world’s highest mountain is eventually scaled, I am certain that it will not be by these south-east cliffs of grooved ice and pounding avalanche. A more terrible and remorseless mountain-side it would be hard to imagine.
9. East Face of Everest, 1924, oil on hessian
From North Col of Everest (fig. 10) is, by a long way, Somervell’s largest picture and may have been painted as a commission for Rugby School although the school has no record of the circumstances in which the painting was acquired by them. It has never been publicly exhibited before. In 2018, it was consigned to Christies with the title ‘On the way to Everest’. Once a more accurate identification was available, the school opted to keep the picture in its collection. The view is north west from the North Col, or Chang La (7020m) and shows at least five identifiable peaks. On the skyline, from extreme left, is Gaurisankar (7134m) and to the right, Cho Oyu (8201m) and Gyachang Kang (7972m). Khumbutse (6636m), the next mountain west of Everest, is seen above the Lho La (6006m), and behind it, Lingtren (6749m) and the rounded bulk of Pumori (7161m). To the left is the western flank of Everest and to the right the slopes of Changtse (North Peak, 7583m). The main Rongbuk Glacier is seen lower centre, and upper centre is the West Rongbuk Glacier leading to the Nup La (5835m).
In After Everest, Somervell recorded his attempts to take a photograph from Camp 4 on the morning of 2 June 1924, shortly before he departed for Camp 5 with Norton and supporting sherpas. ‘The third attempt was successful and produced a photograph of the northwest shoulder of Everest with the shadow of the North Peak on the glacier below’. 12 This photograph was included in After Everest, and 23 years later may have provided inspiration for From North Col of Everest. Somervell was resident in the UK between April 1945 and February 1948, and for at least part of that time was living in Cambridge. His youngest son, Hugh, died in
12 T. Howard Somervell, After Everest, the Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936 and later, p.125.
10. From North Col of Everest, 1947, oil on board
February 1947 and is possible that this tragedy may have impelled him to paint this unique picture. Somervell may also have been inspired to paint on such a large scale by the work of Nicholas Roerich whom he had visited in 1944. Roerich was a mountain artist who Somervell admired and was known for his large scale pictures of the Himalayas.
Somervell is known to have painted several other oil paintings of Everest. ‘Climbers Camp, 26,000’, exhibited in 1926, must date from 1924 as the 1922 expedition did not camp at this altitude. ‘From Camp 6’, also inspired by the 1924 expedition, was exhibited at the Alpine Club in 1954. Both pictures are now presumed lost. Somervell photographed this view on 2 June 1924, shortly before he left Camp 4 for his summit attempt of that year.
Somervell painted at least seven oil paintings of Kangchenjunga, a mountain that he first saw in 1922.13 He was still inspired by the view of Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling over 50 years later. Somervell’s mother died in October 1938 and Somervell returned to Kendal for her funeral. Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling (fig.11) was probably painted in Kendal in the months that followed. Aside from the Kangchenjunga massif, the most prominent peaks are Jannu (7710m) and Kabru (7412m, both left of centre) and Pandim (6691m, extreme right). Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling is one of Somervell’s larger paintings and he presented it to the Downs School, Colwall where his sons had been educated and where his cousin Geoffrey Hoyland was headmaster between 1920-1940.
13 The location and ownership of some of these paintings has yet to be traced. Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling; Kangchenjunga from Gangtok and Pandim from Gangtok were exhibited at the AC in 1923. Kangchenjunga from Jongri was shown there in 1936 and Kangchenjunga in 1954
11. Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling, 1939, oil on board
Four watercolours of Kangchenjunga have been traced. Kangchenjunga from below Darjeeling (1925) is of particular interest in that it bears the inscription 'EFN from THS.1925'. Edward Norton remained a close friend of Somervell after the Everest expeditions and Somervell may have given this painting to Norton to mark the publication of The Fight for Everest:1924. Another watercolour, Southern Aspect of Kangchenjunga (1928), depicts the valley to the south of the Guicha La from the slopes opposite Pandim and was exhibited at the Alpine Club in 1929. Kangchen-junga from Tiger Hill is dated 1947 and another, Sunrise over Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling, is undated. All are in private collections and the last was the AC's Christmas card in 2004.14 Two more watercolours, Domed Peak, Kangchenjunga and Forked Peak, Kangchenjunga, as well as Pandim, Sikkim and Kabru, Sikkim were exhibited at the Club in 1936.
14 Previously owned by George Band. See https://www.mountainpaintings.org/T.H.Somervell.html
12. Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling, oil. Undated but 1933 or later
This view of Nanga Parbat (fig. 13) seen across the Vale of Kashmir is one of three or four oil paintings of the mountain, and perhaps the only one extant. Somervell was offered membership of the 1933 Everest expedition but chose instead to fulfil a long held ambition of visiting Nanga Parbat in Kashmir. He made the long journey from South India to Srinagar and then travelled on to the north. In A Pilgrimage to Nanga Parbat, Somervell wrote:
We started at 5.30, just as dawn was breaking and trudged up to the [Tragbal] pass ... as we got higher peak after peak appeared, until at the top we saw one of the finest mountain panoramas I have ever witnessed. There was a long succession of summits to the west and towering over everything else Nanga Parbat rose clear and majestic to the north. A bitterly cold wind was blowing, so we could delay on the top [no] longer than enabled me to take a few photographs and did a rapid sketch of Nanga Parbat.
At least a further two oils, Nanga Parbat from the South (AC 1954) and Nanga Parbat and its satellites (AC 1954), exist (whereabouts unknown). Somervell also painted nine watercolours of Nanga Parbat of which at least seven survive. Five were exhibited at the Alpine Club in 1936, including Camp near Nanga Parbat, East of Nanga Parbat, Nanga Parbat from Das Khurm and Nanga Parbat in Cloud. The other is probably Nanga Parbat, dated 1933 and in a private collection. There is a further watercolour, Nanga Parbat, also privately held, which Somervell describes on the reverse as one of a pair. It shows the top of the Rupal face as seen from above the Rupal Nallah. Abbot Hall holds a very splendid watercolour, Nanga Parbat from Gulmarg, early morning (1951), which shows the massif seen from the south.
13. Nanga Parbat, 1952; oil on hessian.
14 Nanda Devi, 1959, oil, Abbot Hall Gallery Photo credit Lakeland Arts
Nanda Devi (fig. 14), one of Somervell's largest works, was used to illustrate the cover of the Lake Artists Society annual exhibition catalogue in 1990, the centenary of his birth. It was exhibited at LAS in 1959 and was for some time in the possession of his brother's family. This view is of Nanda Devi East (7434m) and behind, Nanda Devi (7816m). This is the largest and easily the finest of four extant oil pictures of Nanda Devi.15 Of watercolours, the finest example, dated 1926, is in the Alpine Club collection. In late 1962, Somervell gifted his largest oil of Nanda Devi to Abbott Hall Gallery, but not wanting visitors to think that it had been ‘foisted’ onto the gallery he sold it to the deputy director for a token shilling or halfcrown.16
With Hugh Ruttledge and a small party which included his wife, Somervell explored the east and southern aspects of Nanda Devi (7816m) in 1926. They may have been the first to see the southern precipices of this mountain. The view from the east and shows Nanda Devi East
15 Another painting, Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot, is dated 1923 and bears the signature of Somervell's father. WH Somervell visited India as treasurer of the London Missionary Society.
16 Mary Birkett OBE speaking at the opening of ‘Something the Artist Wishes to Say’ 2006.
(7434m) and Nanda Devi behind and to the left. Nanda Devi was first climbed by Tilman and Odell in 1936 and Nanda Devi East was climbed by Tenzing Norgay in 1951. Tenzing considered Nanda Devi East the most difficult mountain he had ever climbed.
The Alpine Club has two watercolours of Nanda Devi: Nanda Devi from Marloti looking west dated 1933 and Nanda Devi from Kwal Ganga-Ka Pahar dated 1926. The latter was probably exhibited at the AC in 1929, and again in 1936. At some later date the painting was given to the Club by Somervell. The view is from about 18,000 feet on the mountain Kwal Gang-Ka Pahar about 10 miles to the north of Nanda Devi and shows the north ridges of Nanda Devi and Nanda Devi East plunging downwards.
THE ALPS AND DOLOMITES
The ‘Tre Cime’ (fig. 15) is a well-known mountain group in the Dolomites, seen here from the north east. From left are Cime Piccola (2857m), Cima Grande (2999m) and Cime Ovest (2773m). Somervell visited this area of the Alps in 1923 but did not climb any of these peaks. Somervell has revelled in the ochres and oranges of the limestone rock, some hot in sun, others cool in shadow.
Somervell traversed the Matterhorn (4478m) in 1920 with Bentley Beetham and others. He painted the mountain many times and at least six pictures survive. By contrast, watercolours of the Matterhorn are rarer with perhaps just two extant. His first exhibited painting of the Matterhorn was in 1921 and he was to make in all, perhaps as many as fifteen paintings of it, including seven in oils, over the next 48 years. Matterhorn, 1967 (fig. 16) is a view from above Zermatt, from the slopes below the Riffelhorn.
15 Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Drei Zinnen) 1963, oil on canvas
16 Matterhorn, 1967, oil on board, 34.5 x 45.5cm
17 Matterhorn from the North, oil on board, 39.5 x 57cm
THE LAKELAND FELLS
Following almost forty years of service as a medical missionary in the south Indian State of Tamil Nadu, Somervell retired to the Lake District. In retirement, he continued to paint scenes from Tibet and the Himalaya, using photographs he had taken many years earlier.17 Over the years he exhibited a total of 136 paintings at the annual exhibitions of the Lake Artist Society from 1920 onwards and, following his return from India, he exhibited with LAS almost every year until his death in 1975.18
In Somervell’s Lake District oeuvre, almost every fell and hillside is represented. Scenes of Great Gable, Wetherlam, the Langdale Pikes and Helvellyn seem to have been amongst his favourites. Dale Head (753m) is a fell in the north west Lake District, north of Honister Pass. In North Side of Dale Head (fig. 18) the artist has used an impasto technique to arrange a mosaic of shapes that represent angle and slope, sun and shade. This picture was in Somervell’s personal collection at the time of his death, and was one of 43 pictures that Margaret ‘Peggy’, the artist’s widow exhibited at Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal in 1976. Five paintings were exhibited posthumously by the Lake Artists Society in 1975. These included paintings from India (In Sind Valley, Kashmir), the Lake District (Dale Head from Robinson), Switzerland (Dawn over the Dom) and Scotland (Loch Eriboll).
17 Chomolhari, (private collection) is dated 1922 and 1972 Nanda Kot, (private collection) is dated 192767 and inscribed on the reverse as from a telephoto image from ‘near Almora’.
18 Catalogues of the annual exhibitions of the Lake Artists Society, Armitt Museum and Library, Ambleside.
18 North Side of Dale Head, oil on hessian
Artist Julian Cooper remembers that Somervell’s work at the Lake Artists Society’s annual exhibitions often stood out from the usual Lakeland landscapes because the subject-matter might also be of the Himalayan, Alpine or Tatra mountains. Somervell was a familiar figure in the Heaton Coopers’ home who would come round to tea after the annual Lake Artists exhibition preview
Howard’s oil painting of the Matterhorn (fig. 17) stood above our mantelpiece at home, and I grew up admiring the powerful way he had of simplifying mountain forms, similar in vision to my father’s watercolours, but by using body colour and oil his paintings had more physical presence. I remember once going to his house above Ambleside where he gave us a private slide show. When he and Peggy moved to their new house further down the hill I recall a box in the porch filled with an assortment of his unframed paintings done on the brown paper. I last saw Howard in 1974 standing outside the Chenil Gallery in the King’s Road in Chelsea when I was passing by. He invited me into the Gallery where a private view of his paintings was in progress.
19 Tilberthwaite Quarry, 1971, oil
20 Ben Nevis, watercolour and gouache on Ingres paper
WORLD WAR 1 SKETCHBOOKS
Although Somervell made very few oil paintings of WW1, preferring instead to paint the magnificent mountain scenery and majestic architecture that he loved, he kept sketchbooks from his war service as an Army surgeon that offer a fascinating, yet often sobering record of his experiences.
After gaining his medical qualifications in 1915, Somervell joined the Royal Army Medical Corp. and was assigned to the No. 34 (West Lancs.) Casualty Clearing Station (34 CCS). In November 1915 they were sent to Northern France, and on 31 December received orders to transfer to Marseille, where they were based for most of January 1916. A large part of their equipment was loaded onto a ship that set sail for Egypt, but at the eleventh hour they received orders to transfer to Boulogne, from where they were sent closer to the front in readiness for the ‘big push’ that was to come. As well as scenery in Provence, the sketches made during this time include views of places visited on their travels through central France. The sketches display a certain naivety of style, when compared with those from later in the war.
21 TH Somervell, Misery, 1918, pencil and watercolour, sketchbook page
34 CCS were eventually stationed at Vecquemont between Amiens and Albert in the Somme area. In After Everest, Somervell writes
…here we prepared a large hospital, mainly of tents, for one thousand patients, which we were told might be the extent of casualties per division on the first day of the battle projected for the beginning of July. We awaited this fight with anxious anticipation. As a matter of fact the first forty-eight hours of work after July 1st brought us nearly ten thousand wounded. Never in the whole war did we see such a terrible sight. A stream of motor-ambulances a mile long waited to be unloaded.
The intensity of the fighting and the number of casualties left little time for any leisure activities in those months of 1916. However, the sketchbooks do also include a number of drawings of his colleagues from around this time. It has sometimes been suggested that he could not paint people but sketches show that, when time allowed, he did have a talent for figures studies and portraiture (fig. 23).
34 CCS had a somewhat peripatetic existence in 1917. The year both began and ended with them stationed in the Somme area. As he did not necessarily use the sketchbook pages sequentially, and only occasionally annotated them with more than just the year and location, it is hard to be certain of their chronological order. There were also times when the CCS was split between different locations, or when he was ‘loaned’ to another unit. In the spring they were stationed at La Chapelette just outside Péronne. The sketches of the towns and villages in this area show increasing levels of destruction (figs. 24 & 25). There are also sketches showing the weapons of war and their effects on people, buildings and the landscape.
In August, 34 CCS were moved north, to the coast close to Dunkirk, eventually being stationed at Zuydcoote near the Belgian border. As well as Ypres, Somervell sketched at a variety of locations in this area. In November they were split up for a time, before rejoining at Frévent, and then undergoing a series of moves that eventually saw them back in the Somme valley at Marchélepot, south of Péronne.
22 In the operating theatre. Photograph by TH Somervell
23 TH Somervell, Soldiers at rest, sketchbook study
In March 1918, in the face of the German stormtrooper offensives they withdrew to Amiens and then to Villers-Bretonneaux. Then in April they went to Étaples and Pernois. During this time, the celebrated war artist William Rothenstein was billeted with 34 CCS, and Somervell got to know him well. In After Everest, he recounts:
We often went out sketching together, and his care in drawing accurately everything that he drew at all impressed itself on my young and rather careless mind. From him I learnt to approach even the humblest objects in nature with respect, and his influence has ever since been with me, leading me to appreciate beauty to an extent I never could have reached had he not become one of my friends.
24 TH Somervell, Péronne 1917, watercolour sketch 25 Péronne City Hall, c. 1916. Photographer unknown
26 (left) TH Somervell, Loupart Wood, 1918, pencil, sketchbook study
27. (right) Sir William Rothenstein, Outside Bourlon Wood, No.1 from 12 Dry-Points, Landscapes of the War 1918-1922, published by The Cotswold Gallery, 1925
In June, further moves saw them eventually stationed at Fienvillers, north of Amiens. With the Allies now advancing, they were moved forward (East) in September to Grévillers near Bapaume (fig. 30) and then in late October to Solesmes, to the east of Cambrai.
After the Armistice in November 1918, Somervell was assigned to the Army of the Rhine, which marched through Belgium and across into Germany. His sketchbook from this time is captioned “Belgium and the Ardennes – Mons to Nideggen. The march from W Front to the Rhine Nov-Dec 1918” and includes more detailed comments on each of the views.
30. (left) TH Somervell, Skulls in Bapaume Church, 1917
31. (right) Pre-operation ward, 26 February 1917, 24th Division. Photograph by TH Somervell
32. TH Somervell, Boche machine gun post, pencil and watercolour, sketchbook study
INDIA AND THE EAST
India played a central part in Somervell’s working life as a missionary surgeon, and was an abiding subject in his sketching and landscape painting. To someone who spent the best part of his working life in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India was not a romantic dream but a day-to-day reality. Although knowledgeable about Hindu beliefs and spirituality, Somervell was at no point seduced by Eastern mysticism and remained strongly committed to Christianity throughout his life. The vagaries of Indian ways, their hypocrisies and superstitions, are recorded in detail in Somervell’s three autobiographies.
In After Everest (1936) he writes of a three-month period of travel in India, beginning in Darjeeling in August 1922 when he journeyed south with sixty pounds in his pocket ‘to see as much as possible of the architecture and the customs of India.’19 The Taj Mahal failed to impress, having what Somervell felt to be a ‘great fault of design’ which made it ‘an ugly building’, but he was greatly impressed by ‘the Buddhist buildings of 2,000 years ago’ at Sanchi and the ‘really marvellous sculpture’ at Ellora and Mamallapuram.20 As a British foreigner, he was spat at in the sacred city of Benares (Varanasi), but was more perturbed by …the vice, deceitfulness, and degradation of generations of “holiness” stamped indelibly upon the faces of priests in a particularly sacred temple; and the simple
19 T. Howard Somervell, After Everest, The Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary, (London: Hodder and Stoughton), 1936 and later, p.75.
20 T. Howard Somervell, After Everest, the Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936 and later, p.76.
33. (left) Manikarnika Ghat,1922 (?), watercolour and gouache on Kraft paper
34. (right) Howard Somervell. Photograph by Howard Coster c.1935
countryman with eager devotion bathing in the Ganges to wash away his sins, far fewer and more venial than those of the priest who (for a fee) bade him to do so.
A monochrome sketch of the burning ghats at Benares was probably painted around this time (fig 33). It is loosely drawn in pencil but quite accurate in its rendition of the topographical details of Manikarnika Ghat and the steps going down to the river’s edge where wrapped corpses are washed in the holy waters of the Ganges before cremation. Somervell may have made the sketch from a boat moored offshore or possibly he took a photograph on which this watercolour is based.
He continued his journey to the extreme south of India where he spent ten days at Neyyoor in what was then the Kingdom of Travancore (later State of Travancore, now part of Tamil Nadu). Here he spent most of his time assisting Stephen Pugh, the surgeon running Neyyoor hospital. Pugh was overworked, approaching retirement age and there was nobody to replace him. Realising how great the need was in this rural part of India, Somervell became convinced that his calling was to work there. This changed the whole course of his life and he returned to India in October 1923 as head of the London Missionary Society’s Neyyoor medical missions. As he worked tirelessly on operations in the hospital and on ground breaking work on the treatment of leprosy, his early interest in the architecture and customs of India developed into a much deeper understanding of the Indian people and of rural village life. Consequently, the paintings and sketches that he produced over the period c.1925-1961 are predominately quiet village scenes (fig. 35), or the lush cultivated landscapes of Tamil Nadu’s sub-tropical interior: a receding patchwork of paddy fields, punctuated by the vertical accents of palm trees, set against a background of crags and mountains below a towering cloudscape (fig. 35).
Somervell used his camera extensively to document village life in what was then an underdeveloped and very rural part of India. In India Calling, published in 1947, he reproduced 35 of his black and white photographs as full page plates. Evidently, he also took his sketchbook with him when he was away from Neyyoor. He sketched at the hill stations of Kodaikanal and Yercaud, Kokkal, Calicut (Kozhikode) in Kerala and Pulivendula in Andhra Pradesh.21 He later became associate professor of surgery at Christian Medical College, Vellore, a post he held until his retirement in 1961.
21 Somervell’s son and daughter-in-law were working as medical missionaries in Pulivendula.
35 Tamil Nadu Landscape, c.1961, oil
36 Pulivendula, c.1955-59, pencil and gouache on tinted Ingres paper
After almost forty years of service as a medical missionary, Howard and Margaret Somervell retired to the Lake District where they were visited at their Ambleside home by their grandchildren in the spring or early summer of 1961. They later embarked on a round-theworld journey, travelling further east to Bangkok and Japan, and continuing to North America. Sketchbook studies continued, some of them in felt tip pen, and Somervell once again used his camera to photograph scenes, some of which were later worked up into oil paintings. Mount Fuji (3776m) is a view seen across Lake Kamaguchi on the Pacific coast of Honshu Island. Another painting: Japanese Alps from Mount Fuji (fig. 37) suggests that Somervell may perhaps have climbed the peak. In the studio, the artist also returned to black and white photographs that he had taken in the Himalaya decades before and used some of them to paint landscapes in oil. One example is Nanda Kot 1927-67, where the earlier date relates to the telephoto photograph and the later date to the completion of the painting.22
Somervell continued to exhibit almost until the end of his life, both in London and as a longstanding member of The Lake Artists Society. The artist William Heaton Cooper was a close friend and fellow member of the Fell & Rock Climbing Club. Julian Cooper remembers that Somervell’s paintings stood out, ‘distinguished by their strong and simplified forms, reminiscent of cubism, and influenced by Nicholas Roerich and perhaps by Ferdinand Hodler…. He was an important and distinctive figure in the Club and the Society, with the Everest reputation adding to his aura.’23 Following his death in 1975, Margaret Somervell continued to show her husband’s paintings. In 1979, she opened an exhibition of selected Himalayan paintings at Abbot Hall Gallery and in 1981, gave three paintings for exhibition at the Fell & Rock Climbing Club to mark its 75th anniversary.24
22 Chomolhari, (private collection) is likewise dated 1922 and 1972. Nanda Kot, (private collection) is dated 1927-67 and inscribed on the reverse as from a telephoto image from ‘near Almora’.
23 Julian Cooper, ‘An artist remembers’, 2024.
24 Jannu (oil), Garhwal (watercolour) and Great Gable.
37 Japanese Alps from Mount Fuji, 1961, oil on canvas
