IT WAS A COLD winter day near the end of the 19th Century and a bright new sun arose that morning bringing warmth and new hope for the owner-driver of a light two-person carriage. He had cleaned his tack the night before and the single horse he used, an elderly Grey, was still white with winter coat and recently reshod. It had been an expense the driver could ill afford. For the carriage needed to be refurbished too, although it was clean and still tidy looking. So the driver was hopeful with this fare, a journey into London from Surrey, from a little passenger, with a morning meeting in town.
Chillingly, it had been a cold start in the dark that morning, pulling a canvas covers off his carriage, Then leading his horse from the shared stable, and setting all the rigging, the tack and lines, which he usually kept in his family kitchen, dry and carefully oiled. So happily, the driver smiled, as he drove along narrow hedged lanes, watching the sun appear to his right, and enjoying the brightening rural views appearing on either side. It was one of those sunrises to suit the painter in winter splendour and glory.
A Winter Sunrise
His passenger that morning was a painter, and his name – Pablo Picasso. Yet, with some irony, he did not want to paint true life, but sought instead to distort, bend, and corrupt life into flat abstract illustration, and to reinvent the wheel as a cube. He certainly did not want to paint Light through the use of Tone, not those wonderful new moments from darkness, when the first sight of light appears on the horizon; ’ The light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world,’ and historically without which mankind could not have survived. Those extraordinary special moments, which anybody anywhere in the world with working eyesight may see happening.
Nor did he wish to paint and record the beautiful Surrey landscapes that he and the driver saw on their journey. It was a dry day with open fields of winter grass beside the roads, or darkly rich and ploughed soil instead, with the roads often lined with trees. Yet this painter did not want that, nor those wonderful old woodlands, many still likely natural, wild and beautiful without their leaves; as nature uncovered, but nothing lost. Nor also the many signs and dwellings of human life along the way, views of the little villages; or small towns full of people whose portraits Picasso also did not wish to paint, unless they were abstracted away from life and shown flat with bright gaudy unchecked colours.
While apart from those little towns on the journey like Leatherhead, with its small streets at different hights above the river, there was also water to cross too. Most likely they drove over the River Mole, with its pretty weeds and shrub covered banks even in winter, and now brilliantly lit in early beams of sunlight. While down below, with eddies and streaming passages, the constant flow of the water provided icy blue contrasts, especially in the shadows, to that steaming white yellow light above; which also sparkled in the rushing water between river narrow banks, or simply reflected on the water’s surface; providing a wholesome pleasure for many painters in all seasons.
From this point our pair may have trotted with their horse through Epsom, the home of the Derby and on up the old A3 towards Wimbledon Common and Battersea Bridge.
Whilst stopping for comment again here briefly, it just beggars’ belief, touching upon insanity, that Picasso could not find anything in real life view worth painting. Such as this minor pastel drawing in charcoal and chalk that I enclose below.
A cold winter morning in the suburbs of Epsom (left)
So, eventually our pair both would then have needed to cross father Thames, that large old river upon the banks of which London itself was built. As sunlight fills the streets on either side, it also falls expansively upon the large wide majestic river below, which reaches away into space through long straights or great shallow curving bends, with the light an intensely shining brightness upon that great water surface. Often the light of day shines reflecting again on a larger scale across those entire views; in the movements of the water, the often-dark shadows of the bridge structures, and the colours of the bridges themselves, with each span providing separate changing shadow contrasts, to the bright sky above. Throughout the year, walking across one of the many bridges, it is a joy to gaze excitedly at the river traffic in an often white dazzling and reflecting light, which particularly in winter seems to warm the face and hands, and as it raises the spirit despite being in a city, where it is not hard to believe one may be fortunately viewing one of nature’s scenes, awash in God’s own light.
Meanwhile, for our driver and his passenger, from their cold start in semi-darkness, as sunlight had shone brightly, it was a little warmer now, and gradually the number of horse drawn carriages increased, all travelling in different directions, thereabouts, as they had approached the suburbs and cobbled stone ways. Their destination was in Chelsea, the house of Augustus John, an academically recognised painter, and Royal Academician (whose Welsh Mountains, is shown above the title). The aim of this meeting, one of many Picasso made, was self-promotion for his Cubism. On this occasion, however, Augustus John was not impressed with those ideas, as he later recorded in his dairy.
Yet other painters unfortunately were. Those who understood the use of poor, or bad publicity, to present their names and work to the public, regardless of any questionable circumstances, gave their support to this modern art movement led by Picasso and Georges Braque… And one can easily list five obvious reasons why.
First, it did not require a lifetime of study to make it.
Second, this modern art was being promoted and presented by the helpful media of that time to a new nouveau riche, those prominent wealthy and independent industrialists and their friends, who had not grown up in an aristocratic family, or been sent out on ‘ the world tour’ to find, purchase and increase the family collection of classical art.
Third, these contemporary giants from the industrial revolution seemed very taken by the idea of a modern art for a modern time, especially when they had contributed to the success of the industrial revolution and were prime targets to be sold these cubist ideas as the very latest in modern taste.
While finally, it became clear how the beginning of ‘Anything is okay with Modern Art,’ immediately allowed them a luxury of claiming their own ideas did truly represent Art, without any need to prove this reality against long well proven standards for Art, with all those past great skills and knowledge required. For all they now needed to do now was to simply say how passionately they believed in those new modern art claims, and who was to say they were wrong?
This was how it started and why the art we have now became accepted and is now promoted to the exclusion of traditional art.
Circus fairground
I will continue this tale next time, but meanwhile I have provide another minor small live chalk pastel drawing of a circus fairground, to again happily demonstrate, there is almost no subject in Life that cannot ever be presented in a conventional traditional Art manner today. And this is little happy scene occurs in our city every year.
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Photo, Mountains in snow, North Wales by Augustus John, 1911, © courtesy of New South Wales Gallery, Australia
