Something in the East Anglian air?
J. Cedric Morris by Lucien Freud (1941)
CLEARLY there's something anarchic in the artistic, and educational air of East Anglia that attracts a defiant independence of spirit and a tolerance, indifference even, to difference. I state my case, M'lud, but will it stand up in Court? Where's the evidence?
Exhibit A: Summerhill School, Leiston. Exhibit B: Benton End and the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing. Exhibit C: The art of Mary Newcomb. The Judge looks nonplussed. "Pray, Sir, Explain."
A. Summerhill, founded by A S Neill in 1921, promoted "Freedom, not Licence" as the basis of a democratic education to enable "the child to live his own life, not one his parents think he should live, nor of an educator who thinks he knows best." Considered by the authorities with suspicion, not least because its first art teacher, Paxton Chadwick, was a communist.
B. Thirty five miles south-west is Benton End, where Cedric Morris and partner Arthur Lett-Haines set up their art school in 1939. At a time when homosexual behaviour was still illegal, locals accepted their predilections, just as Aldeburgh embraced Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Morris and Lett-Haines offered a supportive structure but no formal syllabus or dogma. Instead, good example, community, an informal garden, home-grown food, drink, partying and conversation!
C. Four miles away, deep in Constable country, Flatford Mill was a Field Studies Council centre, established 1943, run by a certain Dr Eric Ennion. Mary Newcomb (1922-2008), naturalist, science teacher, artist, spent several summers there. Ennion taught her how to observe and record creatures, especially birds in flight, and at speed, to capture the moment. The Judge's verdict? "In East Anglia, live well, and let others do likewise. Case closed."
Back to Benton End and the paintings of Sir Cedric Morris (1889 -1982). High profile still, with a major show recently at Philip Mould's in London. Now the Granary Gallery in Berwick-upon-Tweed is showing "Cedric Morris, Artist, Plantsman and Traveller".
Curated by Maltings Head of Visual Art James Lowther, it's the first major exhibition of Morris's work in the north. The excellent catalogue tells his story as artist, teacher, gardener, pioneer ecologist, traveller, and part of a clandestine gay world.
It's quite some achievement to paint the delicacy and detail of his beloved bearded irises in oils, as in "Iris Seedlings" (1943). Clearly Morris was highly skilled as brushman and plantsman both. Sometimes, though, it feels as if he's trying too hard, as in the highly worked, laboured brushstrokes of the flowers in "Helen's Pot" (1936). In your face, crowded, its intense sculptural quality is overwhelming.
And foreign parts? "A Village near Izmir, Turkey" (1971) is strangely lacklustre and flat, the blocky houses in the foreground pushing the eye away rather leading it in. More effective is "Landscape, St Helena" (1965), a valley of lush greens, yellows and tropical luxuriance; you can feel the heat!
Meantime, students at Benton End, including Lucian Freud and, later, Maggi Hambling, basked in experimentation rather than instruction, free to explore their artistic and personal predilections. Hambling thanked Lett-Haines for saying "You've got to make your work your best friend that you can go to whatever you're feeling." Good advice. Both Freud and Hambling went on to considerable recognition, courting controversy in their life and art. Risky though, if it's the person, rather than the art, that attracts more attention.
It's clear that Morris loved the birds that were drawn into his delightfully chaotic and unmanaged garden. However in both "Benton Blue Tit" (1965) and the semi-allegorical "Crisis", (1938), a commentary on the state of a world on the brink of war, they have a somewhat rigid, two dimensional quality. Could they fly?
So very different from Mary Newcomb, Norfolk farmer's wife, whose birds whizz through the air in "A Flock of Goldfinches Dispersing" (1993-5). Blink and you'll miss ‘em! Ephemeral, poetic, light, humorous, quirky, fleeting, some dismiss her work as mere visual aides-memoire, jottings and jabbings. I disagree. Her scientific training gave her an incisive, forensic focus on the life and essence of her subjects at a unique, unrepeatable moment in time, be it the way wings beat, a Suffolk sheep looks, or how a cyclist cuts through the fields.
She loved to work on the move, on buses and trains, seeing humanity as funny and ridiculous, but also endearing and delightful. Like Morris, she loved flowers, but they can come with enigmatic baggage like "Lady with a bunch of Sweet Williams" (1988). It takes a while to see the lady. Is she hiding, or overwhelmed by both flowers and the dark silhouette of the church spire, echoed in her jacket and stockings? Considering herself untaught, Newcomb said "people who have been taught, their thoughts are second-hand". Ouch! But Morris would agree, wouldn't he? Any connection to Northumberland?
Her mentor, Eric Ennion, set up his own field centre at Monks' House, between Bamburgh and Seahouses, in the 1950s. Perhaps she visited? Time for a Mary Newcomb show up north!
NICK JONES
www.maltingsberwick.co.uk/whats-on/cedric-morris-artist-plantsman-traveller
bentonend.co.uk
www.cranekalman.com/artists/52-mary-newcomb
