Patrick George - Landscapes

Patrick George

Patrick George (1923 – 2016) Landscapes 14 October – 4 November 2021 Monday – Friday 10 - 5.30 Saturday by appointment

Browse & Darby 19 Cork Street London W1S 3LP Tel: 020 7734 7984 Fax: 020 7851 6650 email: art@browseanddarby.co.uk www.browseanddarby.co.uk

Introduction Of the genres of painting categorised by the academies from the seventeenth century onwards, portraiture and landscape have always been the most important in English art. In 1991 Patrick George linked these two when he contrasted the oppressive foliage characteristic of his family’s home at Sheepscombe1 in the Cotswolds to the flatness of East Anglia, where he came to live and paint as a mature man. His views of Sheepscombe are animated. George associated the “bad-tempered” character of people in general in Gloucestershire and the west with the wildness of the landscape there, while he preferred the mental ease which he experienced in the spaciousness of the east of England where “the land is at right angles to the trees”. Aged 68 at the time, this projection of a human emotion onto the landscape of his youth was expressed in hindsight, long after he had left2. Alternatively it would be equally valid to relate such paintings to the life-affirming bucolic tradition of paintings celebrating the earth’s natural fecundity, and the cycle of the seasons as practised by the Venetians, Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens3.

The change in locations (west to east) and the lifetime lived between them ask us to consider the flowing development of expression in George’s landscapes, which ran in parallel with a series of major portraits painted mostly in London. Although the specific named locations recorded in the landscapes’ titles are very clearly important to this artist, like the portraits of named individuals, it is in his landscapes that George’s paintings display the greater psychological or emotional depth and variety.

They unleashed his most aesthetic expressions. In landscape we “find” ourselves. Perhaps this is what George meant when he wrote of “internalisation” in his Notes on Painting4.

In the seventeenth century Jacob van Ruisdael had invented an expressive type of Dutch landscape which conveyed human emotions and aspirations and this in turn influenced the East Anglian School and especially Gainsborough and Constable. George always referred to this period in art in relation to his own aspirations as a landscape painter. He frequented the National Gallery to see his “old friends”, especially Rubens’ A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning, (about which he wrote an article in the A Brush with Genius series in The Guardian). This picture influenced him throughout his career. As a young man post-war he had travelled by bicycle through Holland and Belgium, and made a pilgrimage to Het Steen. His sketchbook from the journey also records his admiration for the landscape painters Ruisdael, Cuyp and Hobbema.

1

Andrew Lambirth, Patrick George, Sansom & Co, Bristol, 2014, p. 17, also see p. 57.

Sheepscombe House, the family home is a substantial country house, currently available as a luxury holiday rental property. https://www.luxurycotswoldrentals.co.uk/properties/sheepscombe-house/ Accessed 27-3-2021.

2 The author Laurie Lee also grew up in the Costwolds- he left the nearby village of Slad in 1934, aged 20 and later recalled his experience in his well- known autobiographical books.

3 Robert Cafritz, et al., Places of Delight. The Pastoral Landscape, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., 1988 4 Susan Engledow (ed.), The Likeness is in the Looking. Collected Writings of Patrick George, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2020, p. 55.

Both the flatness of the Dutch and the undulations of Rubens are seen in George’s landscapes, and the balance between these modes fluctuates across his career. In early views such as Woods and Hills, Sheepscombe, Gloucestershire, a dense surface of painterly marks gesturally tumbles counterintuitively from right to left in the foreground, and then left to right in the background5. The greens and blues confront each other across the valley, as if distantly mindful of the elemental forces of glaciers which would have scooped it out millions of years ago. Like the other paintings of this area this picture is in a long horizontal format, and the view is depicted from a high viewpoint, looking down. The compositions of all of these views include diagonals. (Also dating from the 1950s are the equally painterly vertical or “portrait” format urban views around Lower Marsh in London, such as Lower Marsh, Snow, (No.1) and Red Lion Brewery (No.2) and Shot Tower). These pictures dates from the first fourteen- year phase of the artist’s career 1946-1960, when he was aged 23 to 37. Lawrence Gowing has identified a comparable period (of thirteen years) in the first period of Cézanne’s oeuvre, when the artist “emerged from the shadow of his formidable father” during which he was aged 20-336.

Following the theories of Rudolf Steiner, the art historian Konrad Oberhuber imagined that artists’ developments ran in seven-year cycles, and that these periods corresponded to changes in human development7. He mentions engagements with the horizontal and the vertical, and the three axes of space: “depth, width and height”. Although this rigid theory cannot be exactly applied to the periods of George’s art, Oberhuber’s discussion of the periods in one human life relating to changing apprehensions of space is helpful in seeing a similar process at work. George was always conscious of space as a factor, ever since he had been told by William Coldstream, when he was having difficulty painting a still life at Camberwell “you’ve got to paint this space”, a lesson which George admitted to finding hard8. In 2010 George told me that his eyesight had changed over his lifetime and that whereas he had once used glasses, he now found that his eyes had corrected themselves and he could do without.

The transition from the first phase of George’s landscapes to the second (or middle) phase occurred in 1961 when he moved to Hickbush, in East Anglia9. This mature period (1961-1986) lasted 26 years, during which the artist was aged 37 to 66. This period begins with the magnificent painting of Hickbush, Wooded Landscape, 1961-65 now in the Tate, a completely different composition from 5

According to the Sheepscombe village community website, “Sheepscombe is set in a valley surrounded by typical Cotswold countryside, much of the land owned by the National Trust or English Nature, and within a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.” https://sheepscombe.org/?page_id=280 Accessed 27th March 2021.

6 Lawrence Gowing, Cézanne. The Early Years 1859-1872, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, 1988, pp.4-5.

7 Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin. The Early Year in Rome. The Origins of French Classicism, Exhibition Catalogue, Phaidon/ Christies, 1988, pp. 14-15.

8 Patrick George, The William Coldstream Memorial lecture, Tate Britain, 7th July 2008, author’s notes.

9 These longer periods are defined by external factors, rather than by the internally generated dynamic suggested by Oberhuber

the Sheepscombe ones. It seems to announce itself a marker of change. Like many other landscapes from this period, the view is frontal and the viewpoint is low, as in Nicolas Poussin’s two Phocion landscapes of 164810. The seriousness and monumentality of this balanced Classical composition suggests a sense of foreboding, but the oppressive hill is kept at a distance, more or less symmetrical.

Bands of colour hover on the surface, like the patches in Rothko’s paintings of the same period11.

A balance is struck between reason and emotion. The monumental frontal and profile portraits of Natalie Dower of the early 1960s also engage with formal arrangements which similarly emphasise the picture plane. Indeed many of the portraits also engage with spatial configurations comparable to those in the landscapes. Trees at Delmer’s 1973 is another example of this frontal compositional mode, reminiscent also of Cézanne. In this picture we see an example of an exceptional mini-phase, when the painterly handling attains a rare fluidity, reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi and Richard Diebenkorn12, both of whom George admired at this time13. Also from this middle period came many horizontally-oriented views which demonstrate a concern with surveying and measuring14.

The double-square format of some of these landscapes can be related to the English Renaissance architecture of Inigo Jones and Palladio confirming the Classical and English character of George’s art of this period.15 16.

In the Foreword of the catalogue of his 1980 exhibition George acknowledges the “good husbandry” of the farmer on whose land he painted. Like Cézanne he had become an artist against his father’s will. But although no farmer himself, his work of observing and recording is related to farm work.17 Again these pictures represent a Classical phase, just as Rembrandt had entered a “time of transition” from 1640-47 leading to the Classical phase in 1648 (when he was aged 42), characterised by the many horizontal format etching views which are in marked contrast to his earlier Baroque phase18.

10

These pictures by Poussin at the age of 54, initiated a period of his deep engagement with landscape as a subject.

Richard Verdi, Cézanne and Poussin The Classical Vision of Landscape, exhibition catalogue, The National Galleries of Scotland, 1990, pp.14, 37-9, 98-101.

11 In 1962 Adrian Stokes had compared Coldstream’s paintings to Rothko’s. Bruce Laughton, William Coldstream, 2004, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, p.217.

12 Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was a contemporary, born one year before George.

13 The “painterly” aspect of this work is distinct from the “linear”. See Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History.

The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, New York, 1932. Relevant here are his pairs of terms linear and painterly and, plane and recession.

14 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing, Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, University of Chicago Press, 1983.

15 Susan Engledow (ed.), op. cit., pp. 109-113.

16 Pevsner also refers to “excessive horizontalism” as a feature of the proportions some English medieval church archi tecture. Nikolaus Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art, Harmondsworth, 1978, p. 108 17 Patrick George Paintings 1937/1980, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1980.

18 Seymour Slive, Dutch Painting 1600-1800, Pelican History of Art/ Yale University Press 1995, p. 68.

In addition this middle phase in George’s art displays an increasing preservation of the white of the canvas, carving, dividing and opening it to “show the strength of colour that may emerge from it” as Adrian Stokes wrote of Cézanne.19. As with Cézanne, (whose harmonious and assured landscapes of the 1880s were painted in his 40s) George’s Classical phase follows the earlier turbulent phase: lines are increasingly present, and colour becomes purer and thinner.20 George’s Teaching Notes for his classes at the Slade advocated the apprehension of edges and the definition of planes, and these concerns become more apparent during his long association with Euan Uglow21. During this period George wrote that he admired reason, order and clarity in a painting22.

The final phase, lasting thirty years, dates from 1986 to 2016, during which he was aged 66-92 begins with the relocation to Great Saxham in Suffolk. Cycles in art have their own patterns, and in the long last phase the previous elements of style are reconfigured. Wölfflin had associated the painterly with the Baroque, and in this phase George’s art becomes more painterly again. Equally spatial effects become more varied, just as Wölfflin saw the Baroque as engaging with spatial “recession” in many forms as opposed to the simplicity of the plane, which is Classical (or Renaissance). Oberhuber’s ideas on space also seem relevant here. In 1985, George wrote: “To me appearance implies distance.” 23 Door to the Garden 2014 is one of several works emphasising pictorial depth. Seen from a high viewpoint, Way In (No.30) painted in 2001 is an example of an arrangement engaging with a deliberate limited space just as in At Arms Length, the 1990-94 portrait of Susan Engledow, George uses the sitter’s body to define the depth between the picture plane and a figure in front of a background plane. If landscapes could be anthropomorphised to indicate human emotions, then the opposite could also occur. Seen from very near, the surface of the same sitter’s face in Susan Engledow, Close Up,1993-95 was described by George as “bark”, recalling the effect in Three Ash Tree Trunks (No.26) 1994, where the closeness of the bark of the tree trunks cutting across the horizontal canvas, is juxtaposed to a distant horse which appears as if in miniature: an extreme demonstration of the contrast of near and far, or “recession” in Wölfflin’s terms. In Corner of the field, Great Saxham the area demarked by the fence is depicted from a greater distance creating a less dynamic sense of pictorial depth, and this more conventional mode continues to operate amongst the more spatially ambitious late paintings such as Field and trees. Great Saxham. In Grandfathers, brick wall and garden, 2010-13, the juxtaposition of building and trees is almost diagrammatic. This picture represents the artist’s final home, once a folly on a country estate, it looks back toward Saxham Hall, recalling perhaps Sheepscombe House as though somehow in George’s end was his beginning, and the cycle of his life was complete.

Christopher Moock, May 2021 19

Richard Wollheim (ed.), The Image in Form. Selected Writings of Adrian Stokes, Penguin Books, 1972, p. 54.

Richard Verdi, Cézanne and Poussin The Classical Vision of Landscape, pp.48-9, 139.

21 Susan Engledow (ed.), op. cit., p. 55.

22 Susan Engledow (ed.), op. cit., pp. 100-101.

23 Susan Engledow (ed.), op. cit., pp. 19-20.

20

PATRICK GEORGE 1923 Born in Manchester 1941-42 Studied at Edinburgh College of Art (Andrew Grant Scholar) 1942-46 RNVR 1946 Camberwell School of Art 1949 Joined staff of Slade School of Fine Art (part time) 1959 Nigerian College of Art & Technology, Zaria, Head of Department 1960-61 Teaching at various art schools 1961 Slade School of Fine Art (part time)

Member of art panel to implement Coldstream Report - NCDAD

Member of Arts Council

Member of Eastern Arts 1976 Reader, UCL 1983 Professor UCL 1985-88 Slade Professor - Director, Slade School 2016 Died, Suffolk.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1975 Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk 1980 Arts Council Retrospective Exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London, and tour 1984, 89, 94, 98 Browse & Darby, London 2003, ‘07, ’10, ’13, 17, 2021 Selected Group Exhibitions 1981 Eight Figurative Painters, Mellon Center for British Art, Yale & LA Louver Gallery, Los Angeles 1983 The Hard Won Image, Tate Gallery, London 1984 A Singular Vision, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter 1994 Five Protagonists, Browse & Darby, London 2010 A Critic’s Choice-selected by Andrew Lambirth, Browse & Darby, London Public Collections Arts Council St Catherine’s College, Cambridge Chantry Bequest Gipsy Hill College Government Art Collection Government House, Singapore Huddersfield, Municipal Gallery Imperial War Museum

Kings College, London National Portrait Gallery Norwich Castle Museum Reuters Somerville College, Oxford Stuart House, Cambridge Tate Gallery, London University College, London

1. Lower Marsh, Snow, circa 1948, oil on board 14 x 10 inches

3. Lower Marsh, Street Scene, circa 1948, oil on board 9 x 9 inches

4. Lower Marsh, Flats Behind, 1951, oil on board, 29 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches

5. Sheepscombe, oil on board 23 1/8 x 48 5/8 inches

6. Moreton Terrace, Large View from the Back, 1964-9, oil on canvas 60 x 42 inches

10. Rooftops, oil on board 5 1/2 x 8 inches

7. Empty Landscape, 1967-8, oil on canvas 37 3/8 x 55 1/8 inches

12. Hickbush Trees at Delmers, 1973, oil on board 14 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches

11. Moreton Terrace, Bramble’s Small Windows, 1971, oil on board 21 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches

13. Two Ash Trees, Hickbush, circa 1980s, oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches

14. Blue Sky in Pimlico, early 1980s, oil on board 24 x 18 inches

16. Sheep, Grass & Snow, oil on board 7 x 16 1/4 inches

15. Wet Day, oil on panel 11 3/4 x 17 1/4 inches

21. The Temple, Great Saxham, oil on canvas 24 x 48 inches

20. Bridge over the Serpentine, 1988-9, oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches

25. Cattle Grazing, oil on board 8 1/2 x 8 inches

22. The Gap Across the Road, 1990-4, oil on canvas 53 1/4 x 80 1/4 inches

27. Entrance to Grandfathers, oil on board 16 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches

23. The Triangle, 1994-8, oil on canvas 33 x 38 inches

28. Grandfathers, oil on board 19 7/8 x 29 7/8 inches

26. Three Ash Tree Trunk, 1994, oil on canvas 29 1/8 x 40 7/8 inches

32. Apple Tree and Gate, 2002-3, oil on canvas 23 3/4 x 55 inches

29. Sky Shape, 1998, oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches

33. Winter Wood and Corn, circa 2003, oil on canvas 24 5/8 x 39 3/4 inches

30. Way In, 2001, oil on board 38 x 48 inches

36. Gerard’s Gate, 2010, oil on board 10 x 16 1/2 inches

34. U, 2003, oil on board 23 1/4 x 40 inches

35. Corner of Field, 2006, oil on board 15 5/8 x 29 3/4 inches

37. Washing Line and Shed, 2008, oil on board 20 1/4 x 44 inches

39. Last Landscape, oil on board 24 1/8 x 47 1/4 inches

Catalogue 1.

Lower Marsh, Snow, circa 1948, oil on board, 14 x 10 inches

2.

Red Lion Brewery, circa 1948, oil on board, 16 x 11 3/4 inches

3.

Lower Marsh, Street Scene, circa 1948, oil on board, 9 x 9 inches

4.

Lower Marsh, Flats Behind, 1951, oil on board, 29 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches

5.

Sheepscombe, oil on board, 23 1/8 x 48 5/8 inches

6.

Moreton Terrace, Large View from the Back, 1964-9, oil on canvas, 60 x 42 inches

7.

Empty Landscape, 1967-8, oil on canvas, 37 3/8 x 55 1/8 inches

8.

Napkin, oil on panel, 3 1/2 x 7 inches

9.

Kettle, oil on board, 4 3/4 x 6 1/4 inches

10. Rooftops, oil on board, 5 1/2 x 8 inches 11.

Moreton Terrace, Bramble’s Small Windows, 1971, oil on board, 21 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches

12. Hickbush Trees at Delmers, 1973, oil on board, 14 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches 13.

Two Ash Trees, Hickbush, circa 1980s, oil on canvas, 40 x 42 inches

14. Blue Sky in Pimlico, early 1980s, oil on board, 24 x 18 inches 15.

Wet Day, oil on panel, 11 3/4 x 17 1/4 inches

16. Sheep, Grass & Snow, oil on board, 7 x 16 1/4 inches 17.

Cloudy Skies, oil on board, 8 1/4 x 16 1/2 inches

18.

Cottage in a Landscape, oil on board, 5 x 7 inches

19.

Two Pots with Flowers, oil on board, 4 1/2 x 8 inches

20. Bridge over the Serpentine, 1988-9, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches 21.

The Temple, Great Saxham, oil on canvas 24 x 48 inches

22. The Gap Across the Road, 1990-4, oil on canvas, 53 1/4 x 80 1/4 inches 23.

The Triangle, 1994-8, oil on canvas, 33 x 38 inches

24. Two Horses, oil on board, 6 x 9 inches 25.

Cattle Grazing, oil on board, 8 1/2 x 8 inches

26. Three Ash Tree Trunk, 1994, oil on canvas, 29 1/8 x 40 7/8 inches

27.

Entrance to Grandfathers, oil on board, 16 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches

28.

Grandfathers, oil on board, 19 7/8 x 29 7/8 inches

29.

Sky Shape, 1998, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

30. Way In, 2001, oil on board, 38 x 48 inches 31.

Usual Tree I, 2001, oil on board, 7 x 6 1/2 inches

32. Apple Tree and Gate, 2002-3, oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 55 inches 33.

Winter Wood and Corn, circa 2003, oil on canvas, 24 5/8 x 39 3/4 inches

34.

U, 2003, oil on board, 23 1/4 x 40 inches

35.

Corner of Field, 2006, oil on board, 15 5/8 x 29 3/4 inches

36. Gerard’s Gate, 2010, oil on board, 10 x 16 1/2 inches 37.

Washing Line and Shed, oil on board, 20 1/4 x 44 inches

38.

Door to the Garden, 2014, oil on board, 21 x 37 inches

39.

Last Landscape, oil on board, 24 1/8 x 47 1/4 inches

40. New Trees, oil on board, 11 1/2 x 14 inches 41.

Lower Marsh, oil on board, 7 x 7 3/4 inches

Browse & Darby 19 Cork Street London W1S 3LP