Kenneth Clark

by James Stourton

  Graham Sutherland was the artist of whom Clark saw most during the war, because Sutherland and Kathy went to live with Jane and the children at Upton for two years. Douglas Cooper, one of the artist’s biographers, thought proximity to Clark was important in extending Sutherland’s cultural horizons. Clark believed that the war gave what he called the artist’s ‘mood of heightened emotion’ a much wider appeal, and vastly increased his range. ‘Before the war,’ he wrote, ‘Sutherland’s vision was so personal that few people could see nature through his eyes.’19 The artist’s views of London bomb damage (and also of Cornish tin mines) are among the most admired products of the WAAC. Sutherland once described his first impression of the City after a raid: ‘the silence, the absolute dead silence, except every now and again a thin tinkle of falling glass…everywhere there was a terrible stench’.20

  A great deal of Clark’s time was spent trying to release artists from the armed services, typically Carel Weight from the Royal Armoured Corps, and Mervyn Peake from ‘washing dishes’.21 Clark believed Peake would make a brilliant propaganda artist, but had difficulty in getting him accepted by the WAAC. The most difficult case, however, was Victor Pasmore. Pasmore, a conscientious objector, had quixotically started military training at Sandhurst out of loathing of Nazism. Clark was therefore surprised when he appeared one day in his office at the National Gallery. It emerged that the artist had walked out, and was ‘absent without leave’. Clark could not prevent him being sent to prison, but wrote a note stating that he was ‘one of the most completely sincere people I have ever met…in my view his first duty to society is to paint. I would not say that about many artists, perhaps there are only half a dozen…’22 Pasmore was never a War Artist, partly because as a ‘pure painter’ his subject-matter did not qualify, and partly because his principles would not allow him to accept the concept. He settled in 1942 in Hammersmith Terrace, whence he wrote Clark begging letters describing the minutiae of his finances and the difficulty of finding buyers for his paintings. Clark appears at his most patient in his dealings with Pasmore; he guaranteed his overdraft, and acquired virtually all his best work from this period.

  Clark’s patience with all artists is particularly evident when one looks at the correspondence he received. Those who – like Graham Bell – had a lot of time on their hands would write anything between five and ten pages a month telling Clark about their war work, and seem not to have been troubled by the lack of replies. One of the longest and warmest correspondences was with David Jones (who was not a War Artist), who, referring to the need for a new Ruskin, thought ‘we perhaps have [one] in Kenneth Clark’.23 Clark owned three of Jones’s works, and when Jones asked if he could extend El Greco’s Christ and the Money Changers as Picture of the Month for an extra week, Clark duly obliged. Jones’s verdict on Clark was: ‘Kenneth is a funny chap, a funny chap…’24 Clark was to support him financially, putting £25 anonymously in Jones’s bank account each year from 1944 onwards, rising to £150 a year in the 1950s.

  Clark struggled to do his best for artists who were deemed unsuitable on grounds of style or subject-matter. Maynard Keynes asked him to help Ivon Hitchens, but as Clark wrote, ‘I am afraid a letter from me saying that he is a good painter would not make much impression on the Ministry of Labour. I have managed to get some painters of his age deferred because they were doing commissions for the War Artists Committee, but his style makes it impossible to give him any official work, unless some enlightened person would commission him to decorate canteens.’25 He duly wrote the necessary letters to help Hitchens. A number of artists turned against Clark when their work was rejected. Typical was C.R.W. Nevinson, who used to refer to him as ‘Kenneth Napoleon Clark’, and in 1940 wrote, ‘it would be better to be gassed by the enemy than breathe in a hot house atmosphere of museum cranks and didactic favouritism’.26 Perhaps the most poignant omission from the WAAC was Rex Whistler, who was killed on active service in Normandy in 1944. Clark later claimed that Whistler had not wanted to be a War Artist, but there is no evidence that he was ever approached, and one suspects that Clark did not like his work except as a stage designer.*2 Although the scheme did protect the lives of War Artists there were some losses: Eric Ravilious, who died on an RAF rescue mission in Iceland; Albert Richards, who was killed by a mine in Belgium; and Thomas Hennell, who may have been murdered by nationalists in Borneo.

  Among the more troublesome artists for Clark was Paul Nash. Early in the war he wrote to Clark that he wanted to paint ‘Monsters’, by which he meant tanks, aeroplanes (particularly), submarines, etc. ‘This is the War of the Machines,’ he declared, ‘and they have taken on human and animal appearance.’27 He was supremely suited to paint the machines of war, and his Battle of Britain (1941) is one of the best paintings of the whole scheme. But Nash constantly badgered Clark about the RAF bigwigs who failed to appreciate him, and about money: ‘I do earnestly pray you will be able to arrange that I get a monthly cheque, as my present position demands a regular wage of some sort.’28 Then the Air Ministry refused to renew Nash’s contract because they felt he was inaccurate in his depictions of aircraft. Clark wrote to the ministry, telling them in unusually strong terms how foolish they were, but as he pointed out to Nash, there were a number of senior members (led by Air Commodore Peake) who yearned for the Royal Academy style. Nash would write to Clark for reassurance: ‘I am always left with a feeling of failure; that is why I want to hear other people’s opinions’ – which Clark would give as tactfully as possible: ‘it [Nash’s painting Defence of Albion] will come in for a lot of criticism because you have altered the proportions of the aircraft. People are used to artists changing the proportions of landscape…but there is something sacred about the nicely calculated proportions of an aircraft…however you have certainly succeeded in pleasing me.’29 This was not always the case, however – when Nash produced the semi-abstract Battle of Germany (1944) Clark had to admit: ‘I can only tell you truthfully my own feeling in front of it, which is apologetic bewilderment and incomprehension.’30

  Unquestionably the most difficult of all was Wyndham Lewis, a veteran artist of the First World War who was living in Canada. Lewis approached Clark via Henry Moore, offering to paint Canada’s industrial war effort. Clark enthusiastically agreed, whereupon Lewis started to dictate terms. He rejected the offered one hundred guineas, demanding a fee of £300, paid in advance, in order that he might be able to afford to return to England. Wartime currency restrictions made it extraordinarily difficult to send money abroad, and the WAAC never paid for works that it could not first inspect, but Clark broke all the rules to accommodate Lewis, and the committee sent half the sum he demanded. Lewis set to work – with many interruptions – at the Anaconda Brass works. A year later he claimed his painting was completed, and secured the other half of the payment, but no picture materialised. He refused to send it – ignoring the fact that it was now the property of the WAAC – and thoroughly enjoyed teasing Clark and the committee, complaining to T.S. Eliot, Augustus John and anyone who would listen that he was being persecuted by Clark, who was not only an ‘art dictator’ but representative of all that was most evil in the bureaucratic system exploiting artists like himself. Lewis, who relished enmity, became fixated with Clark: ‘I have a natural dislike of being patronised by sleek gentlemen for whom the Fine Arts is a fine lucrative official assignment, and the road up to the social summits for the clever climber.’31 Clark resigned himself to not receiving the painting: ‘I fear that we have been simply swindled,’ he scribbled over a letter on the subject. The committee briefly got possession of A Canadian War Factory in 1946, but Lewis took it back for further work, and it only entered the Tate after his death in 1957.

  It was not only his detractors who tested Clark’s patience. In May 1941 John Betjeman wrote from Dublin to tell him about the work of a young woman, ‘twenty seven, red haird [sic] and awkward and not cognisant of any modern artists’, called Miss Nano Reid. He enthused about her landscapes,
and at a time when Clark was still at the MoI with hardly a moment to himself, urged: ‘if you could get for me a London gallery…will you act as agent and let me send the pictures to you? Now for heaven’s sake do come over…Love to Miss Arnold…Sean O’betjeman.’32 Clark rashly wrote back: ‘Send me over some of Miss Nano Reid’s watercolours and I will guarantee to get them exhibited, either at the Redfern or the Leicester Galleries.’33 Nano Reid was, according to Betjeman, beside herself with excitement, but Clark was less enthused when he saw her watercolours, ‘some of which are rather inconclusive’ – but for the sake of Betjeman and Anglo–Irish relations he persevered. The exhibition was a predictable failure, and Betjeman pushed his luck further by asking if Clark could send the watercolours back to the artist, whether any had been sold, whether any notices had appeared, and whether the pictures should be transferred to another gallery. The answer was a polite no to everything. When the Redfern Gallery was unable to get a permit to return the pictures to Dublin it dumped them on Clark, who had to call in favours and have them returned via the diplomatic bag, commenting: ‘the whole affair has done more harm than good’.34

  Clark was determined to exhibit the paintings of the WAAC as soon as possible in order to engage the public’s interest. They were mostly shown at the National Gallery, starting from July 1940, but nine smaller exhibitions were also mounted and sent to 140 towns and villages around Britain, to be displayed wherever possible. Attendance figures were impressive: five hundred a day in Bath, eight hundred a day in Braintree. Clark and his committee often conceived the exhibitions along the lines of ‘The Battle of the Workshops’, ‘The Battle of the Air’, ‘The Battle of the Seas’, etc. Preparing them was a chance to assess the hoard amassed, and Clark recognised its weakness in a letter to Frank Pick in 1941: ‘all bits and pieces; too many sketches and not enough major works’.35 He bemoaned the preponderance of air-raid-damage subjects, ‘which no artist can resist’.36 The following year he wrote a thoughtful review of one of his own National Gallery exhibitions, in which he asserted that ‘English painting is becoming a great deal more English…a certain strangeness, and an almost dreamlike intensity’.37 He admired Stanley Spencer’s triptych of Burners in a Clyde Shipbuilding Yard, which he thought was the best of the first batch of war paintings, and observed that the gift of humorous illustration in the tradition of Gillray and Rowlandson was alive and well in Edward Ardizzone’s genial depictions of ‘fat W.A.A.F’s, boozy and over-enthusiastic Home Guards’. Only portrait painting disappointed, with half a cheer for Eric Kennington, William Dring and Henry Lamb.

  The most ambitious undertaking by the WAAC was the sending of an exhibition of 110 paintings, ‘Britain at War’, to MoMA in New York in the spring of 1941. The motivation was political, with the hope in those pre-Pearl Harbor days that the USA would be stirred into supporting the British war effort. Clark opened the exhibition from London by radio broadcast. Harold Nicolson told the story in his diary: ‘Before midnight I am picked up by Kenneth Clark and we go to the BBC…Jane comes with us. As usual she looks as smart and neat as a new pin. It is rather a curious experience. K and I sit opposite each other and have earphones then we hear that we are linked up to New York and Kenneth starts doing his piece. He is opening the exhibition of British War Artists in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.’38 The exhibition was a huge success with New Yorkers – three thousand visitors on the opening day alone – and moved on to Baltimore and then Ottawa. The following year there was even a suggestion that the War Artists’ pictures should be sent to Russia, an idea that foundered because of transport difficulties, among other problems.

  The WAAC scheme continued until the very end of the war. This came with its terrible revelation: the opening of the German concentration camps made a macabre set of subjects for Mary Kessell. She arrived at Bergen-Belsen on 9 August 1945 and stayed there for three weeks, making visits also to Hamburg, Hanover, Kiel, Berlin and Potsdam. As moved by the despairing German population as she was by Belsen itself, she wrote a number of stricken letters to Clark from Berlin: ‘No words can describe this place. Every poet & artist & thinker should come and see it – and feel it. This white silence after chaos, so silent – one can hear the crickets singing. And the smell – of thousands dead – and creeping groups with bundles & nothingness for miles – but ruins.’39

  When the War Artists scheme was finally wound up, it was estimated that the entire project had cost the Treasury £96,000 for six thousand works of art. It had given full-time employment to thirty-six male artists and one female,*3 and short-term contracts to a hundred others. It had also purchased works submitted by an additional 264 artists, both amateur and professional. The scheme’s final act was the distribution of the pieces among museums and galleries around Britain and the Commonwealth. The lion’s share went to the Tate and the Imperial War Museum.

  What was Clark’s final assessment of the WAAC’s achievements? He had to admit that no new artists had come forward – except Albert Richards – and he had never expected masterpieces to emerge, but he felt that the results were very satisfactory. Above all, he was pleased that the gulf between artists and the public had been bridged. Quite early in the war he took part in a BBC Brains Trust in which he expressed it best: ‘Artists before the war…were painting for themselves with subjects the public couldn’t understand, they lacked subjects. The war has given the artists a subject, something they feel deeply about. War does not create artists, but it has enabled the best artists to get in touch with a much bigger public.’40 His hope was that the War Artists collection might form the basis for a fuller artistic appreciation after the war. In this he would be partly disappointed, as once the war was over the public lost its appetite for painting. But the state had shown that patronage of living artists could be an important component of national life, and this would unexpectedly continue through the birth of the Arts Council.

  * * *

  *1 This was largely to do with the inspiring subject, a twenty-one-year-old young woman at the ordnance factory at Monmouth, who had been bombed out of London and acquired extraordinary skills at making components.

  *2 See letter to Henry Lewes, 10 May 1969 (Tate 8812/1/4/55). Whistler’s name was on a reserve list, with ‘No’ marked against it. The artist’s brother and biographer, Laurence, wrote to Clark to ask if he was ever considered; his response was one of dissembling and surprise (2 December 1982, Tate 8812/1/4/444). But Clark spoke of Whistler’s death as ‘a real disaster for the English stage’ (lecture, ‘Ballet Decors’, late 1940s?, Tate 8812/2/2/76–77).

  *3 This was Evelyn Dunbar, who was assigned to the MoI in 1943–44, with the expectation that she would specialise in ‘agricultural and women’s subjects’.

  21

  The Home Front

  Before the war Jane and I had seldom been separated from one another by more than a day or two. Now I was cut off from her for weeks at a time. Naturally I got into trouble of a kind which I need neither specify nor describe.

  KENNETH CLARK, The Other Half

  While Clark was one of the busiest men in London during the war, chairing committees and organising artists, Jane was frustrated at Upton. He would write to her several times a week, and was careful to give the impression that he was having a miserable time. Upton was a very attractive country house, but it involved a lot of work for Jane, who was having to run the household with a much reduced staff, and also found herself responsible for the children for the first time. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that she got very little pleasure from family life. As Clark told his mother, Jane ‘is so much more highly strung than she will admit’.1 When Alan chose his Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 in 1995 he described his mother as ‘a terrible lip-curler…she was often very cruel. I didn’t have any standard to compare her by until I sat around a cabinet table with Mrs Thatcher and then I saw again a woman being as cruel.’2 Yet she could change in an instant. When their father was away she could be angelic to the children, espec
ially to Colin, whom she perceived as needing special protection. She had a difficult relationship with Colin’s twin, Colette, at whom she often shouted, ‘You are a spoilt, stupid, selfish girl and I wish you were dead.’ When Clark was at home her screaming was often directed at him until somebody else appeared, when all would be serene and she would be the adoring wife once more. One day at Upton she got into such a rage that Clark took refuge with his mother at Cheltenham. For a man whose most fervent prayer was for a quiet life, it is remarkable how unsuccessful he was at achieving it. People often wondered why he accepted Jane’s behaviour so meekly – it was perhaps a mixture of old-fashioned values, love and guilt.