The 20th Century
The Borough Art Collection houses a number of accomplished oil paintings and delicate water colours by Philip Connard. These gauzy washes and sketchy oils, painted during his later years, primarily depict Thames-side views. Connard never tired of the Richmond riverside, and, in the company of the painter Anne Finlay, he spent many hours observing life on the river from the towpath. His most serene and productive years were spent in Richmond between 1932 and 1958.
Artist: Philip Connard. Watercolor.
According to his daughter Jane: "It was an invariable habit of his to go for a long after-breakfast walk before settling down to paint. In these walks he was observing, remembering, storing up knowledge: the patter of the sky, the flight of the swans, the structure of a tree. He moved through life alternately delighted by what he saw and disturbed by what he felt. He has left us a generous legacy of this delights".
Connard started his career as a house decorator, fitting in art classes in the evenings. In 1896 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, South Kensington. Two years later, he won a British Institute travelling scholarship to Paris, where he worked as a carpet designer. On his return he took a teaching post at the Lambeth School of Art. It was here that he met his wife who was at the Leicester Galleries in London. It was a great success, and he began to paint full-time. After the First World War he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and by 1945 was keeper of the Royal Academy School.
Artist: Philip Connard. Watercolor.
‘Holding an exceptional position at once of an original talent, and of the pupil of his father, the authoritative depository of a mess of inherited knowledge and experience, has certainly served us as a guide, or, let us say, a dictionary of theory and practice on the road we have elected to follow.’ Walter Sickert, 1914.
Artist: Lucien Pissarro
Lucien Pissarro had a great impact on the Neo and Post-Impressionist painters in England. A founder member of the Camden Town Group (1911) presided over by Sickert; Pissarro’s theories on light, colour and his use of broken lines of paint had a great influence on J.B. Manson, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, with whom Pissarro collaborated on book design. He also assisted with promoting the work of the French Impressionists, many of whom he knew. Pissarro was himself the eldest son of the ‘Father of Impressionism’ Camille Pissarro (1830-1903).
Lucien and his brothers Georges (1871-1961), Felix (1874-1987) (buried in Richmond Cemetery), Lodovic Rodolphe (1878-1952) and Paul-Emile (1884-1972) frequently visited England. Lucien permanently moved to London in 1890, married Esther Bensusan in 1892 and moved to Chiswick in 1902. From this period, he completed over thirty views of West London and twenty of Kew gardens alone.
Pissarro was a frequent visitor to Richmond where he attended musical soirees hosted by his friend musician and painter James Brown. Recovering from a prostate operation in 1935, Pissarro recuperated in Richmond, and during his three-month stay there painted four oils of Richmond Bridge and riverside including this work. Like his father, Lucien strove to faithfully record visual and emotional sensations.
A retrospective of Osmund Caine’s work was held at the gallery in 1998. His watercolours, oil paintings and designs for stained glass windows mark him out as one of England’s finest post-war artists, yet is best remembered as the inventor of the bikini in his 1938 painting Bathing Beach (Private Collection).
Caine was born in Manchester and attended the Birmingham School of Art. After the war he taught at the Twickenham School of Art for thirty years, supplemented by classes at Kingston School of Art, Borough Polytechnic and a day a week teaching art appreciation to apprentice employees at Bentalls Department Store.
The abstracted figures, range of colours and mood in Wedding at Twickenham Parish Church strongly evoke the works of Stanley Spencer, in particular his Resurrection (1923-1927). Spencer’s work, one of the most remarkable modern religious paintings, is set in Cookham churchyard near the Thames in Berkshire. Spencer playfully included himself and his wife Hilda amongst those resurrected. Caine also includes himself and his wife Mary in his work - their names are carved on the gravestone included in the foreground on the left. According to the artist, the surname is spelt ‘Cain’, as he ran out of room. The gravestone includes lines from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1757) by the poet and friend of Walpole Thomas Gray. The atmosphere of the poem pervades the work, in particular the lines:
‘Some frail memorial still erected nigh, with uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their name, years, spelt by unlettered muse, the place of fame and elegy supply’. The iconography and symbolism of this work is complicated. The hurrying newlyweds, witnessed by passers-by but not, it appears, by family imply that perhaps they have married in haste (the child, the only figure included in front of the railings, hints at the possibility of pregnancy). On the other hand, it could be interpreted as a celebration of the sanctity of marriage and the rewards of eternal life.